Janis Joplin many times sang the mournful lyrics “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose” back in the ‘60s, and well she knew the cost of freedom. It was in the price of what she gave up…not what anyone took. She never really had freedom, despite her fame and convoluted fortune, and that’s what she was saying. I know this because my business partner at the time was her best friend, and she was with her until the end.
The Cost Of Freedom Blog is about how we’ve all lost our freedom by our collective choice of attitude. We might be free to drive around and do a lot of things freely, but few people seem to know how much we’ve given up to be “free,” and what that’s costing them…and us as a society. Our prisons and jails are full of people who know the pain of that lost freedom, but the fact is few of them had it to begin with. The same is true to a less dramatic but no less impactful way about many of the rest of us who live in prisons of a different kind.
But it’s not just that, by any means. It’s much more positive than that. It’s about how we take steps to get that freedom back…again by our choice of attitude, and by our willingness to tell the truth and be accountable for our thoughts, words and actions––how we learn to respect one another, and our individual cultures, gender and personal circumstances.
The photo above depicts freedom to me, both in an energetic, visual sense, and in a more personal sense. I twice flew a light plane over that bridge, once when it was enshrouded in thick fog and only a few skyscrapers (literally) poked through the layers of Walt Disney clouds, and again later on in her famous “golden glow” at sunset. Many years later, I stood under her with a group of my closest friends celebrating a breakthrough moment in my life. I had just addressed a luncheon of the members of the San Francisco Yacht Club on the subject of the meaning and true value of personal freedom, as one who served 2 1/2 years in federal prison, and whose federal prosecutor later wrote the Foreword to a book I authored. Behind me in the distance as I spoke to this esteemed body of accomplished people…was Alcatraz.
This Blog Site is about Personal Freedom, and I’d like to focus on those who have done time on either side of the fences and walls. It is my desire to explore ways and exchange ideas and principles of understanding how we create a better, more effective and truly correctional system of criminal justice. If we can make even a 15% positive change, the impact on society overall will be huge. Imagine what it could be like if we could make that 50%. We can. We just have to think…and act…differently. I know, “easier said than done”…but we have to start somewhere. Why not start with ourselves?
Don Kirchner
ReturnToHonor.org
Showing posts with label re-entry programs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label re-entry programs. Show all posts
For years prohibitionists, including our own Drug Enforcement Administration, have claimed — falsely — that the tolerant marijuana policies of the Netherlands have made that nation a nest of crime and drug abuse. They may have trouble wrapping their little brains around this:
The Dutch government is getting ready to close eight prisons because they don’t have enough criminals to fill them. Officials attribute the shortage of prisoners to a declining crime rate.
Just for fun, let’s compare the Netherlands to California. With a population of 16.6 million, the Dutch prison population is about 12,000. With its population of 36.7 million, California should have a bit more than double the Dutch prison population. California’s actual prison population is 171,000.
So, whose drug policies are keeping the streets safer?
Some people are concerned about a network of internment camps that appears to being built at great expense around the nation.
What's more shocking is that right now the US has more people behind bars than any country on earth including Russia and China.
In fact, one of of every four human beings on earth who is imprisoned is in a US facility. Look it up.
That's a horror show taking place right now and it barely merits comment.
Amazingly, a vast network of legalized slave labor based on imprisoning blacks for petty and made up crimes existed in broad daylight in the South up until 1945, the reality of which is only just now coming to light.
A front page feature article in today’s Sunday paper described the rising interest on the part of aging Americans to join the Peace Corps and “make a difference” in the world. God knows that the starving kids in Bosnia, Bulgaria and people living less fortunately in all parts of the world need and well deserve all the help they can get. At the same time, however, so do millions of our own people right here in America. Believe it or not, we have many “third-world” living conditions within our own borders. Some of them are Native American reservations, which to me is an ironic twist of fate for those whose ancestors were here first, and many more who are in the streets of many of our biggest cities. Of those, a huge percentage are people who have either done time in prisons and jails of America, or are destined to if their attitudes and lifestyles don’t change soon. Then there are the families and the children of those who are or have been incarcerated. When one considers that 2.6 million people are locked up across America, and they impact at least 5 to 10 people on the outside, that number alone is staggering to consider. It exceeds the entire populations of some of those third-world countries who "need our help".
So, what about us? What about our people? What about the children growing up in neighborhoods where the wallpaper on whatever rooms they have to sleep in are constantly illuminated with the red and blue flashing lights of the police cars outside, and whose playgrounds are streets filled with drug addicts and dealers, prostitutes and police SWAT teams and helicopters circling overhead? How do they fend for themselves, and what hope do they have for a better way to live? Who’s making a difference in their lives?
In the early 1980’s, Jerome Miller became the Director of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections. In an unprecedented move, Mr. Miller closed all but the most essential juvenile detention centers in his state, and put the money saved into pro-active programs to mentor and provide simple caring to juveniles in the form of college students paid to “hang out” with juveniles as “big brothers” and “big sisters.” The rate of juvenile crime in Massachusetts during those years dropped by over 50%.
As someone who has dedicated much of the past decade or so to “making a difference” right here at home, I commend anyone wishing to do anything that makes a difference in the lives of others, and I urge anyone wishing to do so to look into juvenile diversion programs and anything having to do with “re-entry” or “aftercare” of former felons. It’s not a bad or scary thing, because every former offender (and they are “former” until they re-offend), is really just a terrified little kid in a scarred, tattooed grown-up body who made the wrong but often only choices available to them early in life.
You want to make a difference in the world? Start right here at home…and right now. All it takes is a modicum of compassion, a willingness to understand, and a little courage to overcome preconceived notions and judgments, and make an effort to learn more about it. Just that much will reduce crime in this country by as much as 10%, I can promise you. As a noted correctional specialist once wrote to me, “For altruists who want to save lives, that’s a lot of lives. To economists who want to save money, that’s a lot of money.” Google “Prisoner Re-entry” or “Prisoner Aftercare Programs” in your state for more information than you can likely absorb in the two years required to serve in the Peace Corps, or check out the large number of affiliates and resources appearing on this blog site, and you may just find your “next calling” in life.
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.
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."
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.
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.
President-elect Barack Obama will order the closing of the Guantanamo Bay US military prison, his advisers say, according to Lara Jakes of The Associated Press: That executive order is expected during Obama's first week on the job — and possibly on his first day, according to two transition team advisers. Both spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Obama's order will direct his administration to figure out what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and potential witnesses who are being held at Guantanamo.
It's still unlikely the prison would be closed any time soon. Obama last weekend said it would be "a challenge" to close it even within the first 100 days of his administration.
The number of inmates on hunger strike at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility has risen sharply to 42 -- eight more than last week, officials said Monday at the US-run "war-on-terror" prison.
"We have 42 hunger strikers," said Captain Pauline Storum, spokesperson for the facility, who said the figure includes 31 detainees being force-fed. There are roughly 250 inmates detained at Guantanamo. Last Friday there were just 34 inmates who refused food, of whom 25 were forcibly fed.
Officials at Guantanamo said a detainee is classified as being on hunger strike after going for three consecutive days without eating.
Arlington, VA – The economic downturn, home foreclosures, and major cuts to law enforcement and crime prevention budgets have led President and CEO Alfonso Lenhardt of the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) to call upon President-elect Barack Obama to commit to a national agenda to renew crime prevention resources and support local law enforcement across the country.
“Waves of local crime are breaking out in communities all across the country. It is imperative that our new president enact a strategy to stem the rising tide of crime,” said Lenhardt. “Many of us have become complacent with constant reports of a record 30-year decline in crime rates.”
Lenhardt continued by saying that part of the economic crisis is the very real risk of crime escalating. Last year 1.7 million violent crimes occurred. What are we doing about those victimized or those we want to prevent becoming the next victims? While Wall Street grapples with its financial storm, main street America is dealing with a potential perfect storm of crime. Communities confronting the home foreclosure crisis are seeing an increase in crime. Tight budgets for public safety services mean fewer resources to combat crime at the local level. Reduced services and a bleak economic future can make people resort to crime just to make ends meet.
Recently, 45 cities in a survey conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum reported a 12 percent increase in robberies over the last two years and an increase of nearly 10 percent in aggravated assaults with a firearm. Furthermore, a recent report stated nearly 30 percent of U.S. cities reported an increase in vandalism and burglary from foreclosed properties and nationally, one in 33 homeowners expect to be in foreclosure in the next two years, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
If America wants to stop the rising crime in our hardest hit communities and keep crime at bay in others, we must invest in comprehensive approaches to fighting crime. Together we can establish cost-effective prevention strategies and initiatives to help encourage Americans of all ages to do their part.
NCPC is calling for a five-step agenda to prevent crime.
1. Restore funding to local law enforcement and public safety services with emphasis on bringing crime prevention education services back to local police departments across the country.
2. Create a movement to prevent crime in America. Call upon all citizens to become actively engaged in the effort to reduce crime and get involved in prevention activities that create safer, more caring communities.
3. Support crime prevention education initiatives and programs that work to build better citizens who work to prevent crime in communities hardest hit by current spikes in crime.
4. Establish a crime prevention organization in every state whose responsibility is to engage all levels of the community in prevention strategies and to work with local law enforcement to find solutions to local crime problems.
5. Reduce the rate of recidivism by providing reentry programs, crime prevention education, and job opportunities for the more than 650,000 prisoners returning to their communities each year.
The National Crime Prevention Council believes crime prevention is everyone’s business. We know how to make our communities safer by investing in the programs that work and supporting our law enforcement partners across the country.
In conclusion, NCPC President and CEO Lenhardt had one light-hearted offer for President-elect Obama. “If it helps with the new puppy talk at the White House, NCPC is happy to lend our beloved icon, McGruff the Crime Dog, to keep things safe and sound.”
The National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) is a private, nonprofit organization whose primary mission is to be the nation’s leader in helping people keep themselves, their families, and their communities safe from crime. NCPC manages public service advertising under the National Citizens’ Crime Prevention Campaign—symbolized by McGruff the Crime Dog® and his “Take A Bite Out Of Crime®” slogan—and acts as secretariat for the Crime Prevention Coalition of America, more than 400 national, federal, state, and local organizations representing thousands of constituents who are committed to preventing crime. NCPC is funded through a variety of government agencies, corporate and private foundations, and donations from private individuals.
Further Information: Michelle Boykins 202-261-4184 mboykins@ncpc.org
1. The conditions of prisons are inhumane. In many prisons, inmates are victims of physical abuse and excessive disciplinary action. Overcrowding and double-bunking are widespread. At the same time, many "supermax" prisons subject inmates to prolonged isolation in tiny cells, which frequently fosters mental illness. Prisoners also tend to have inadequate access to physical and mental healthcare.
2. Prisons are "crime factories." Instead of curbing criminal tendencies, prisons encourage them. Violent and aggressive behavior is standard and even rewarded. It's clear that time served in such conditions regularly creates violent criminals from nonviolent ones.
3. Recidivism rates are exceedingly high. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than two-thirds of released prisoners are re-arrested within three years. These figures underline the ineffectiveness of prison as a deterrent and a reformer. They also lead to a related criticism of prison trends: Increasingly, people are re-arrested on technical parole violations, such as missing an appointment with a parole officer, and returned to the system more quickly than in the past.
4. Prisons are expensive. According to CBS News, taxpayers are paying an estimated $40 billion a year for prisons. Feeding and caring for an inmate costs about $20,000 a year on average, and construction costs are about $100,000 per cell. The demand to build more prisons has often siphoned funds from the few existing treatment and education programs, leading to a vicious circle in which more prisons are needed because, partly due to the lack of these programs, more prisoners continue to come back.
5. Most of the growth in prison population has been for nonviolent offenders, especially those convicted on drug charges. Because of mandatory sentencing laws, over half of today's inmates are incarcerated on drug charges, despite evidence that treatment programs are much more effective at preventing future drug offenses.
6. The combined effects of disenfranchisement laws, inmate population trends and economic realities perpetuate a racial divide in society. Prisoners are disproportionately from minority communities. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on current rates of incarceration an estimated 32 percent of black males will enter prison during their lifetime, compared with 17 percent of Hispanic males and 5.9 percent of white males. Once released, many prisoners lack job skills and face employer suspicion. In most states convicted felons are not allowed to vote from prison; in twelve states, felons are disenfranchised for life. These factors contribute to widespread unemployment in minority communities as well as disproportionately meager electoral representation.
7. Under draconian laws, people can end up in jail for life for nonviolent crimes. Because of the ascendancy of "three strikes" laws, for example in California, it is increasingly common for people to receive life sentences for offenses such as drug possession and welfare fraud.
8. Most prisoners will be released into society, and are not prepared by prisons to participate productively. The culture of parole has changed dramatically over the past generation. Now there is much less individualized consideration of how well prepared an inmate is to leave prison. Less help is provided to facilitate that preparation, and fewer parole officers are available to ease the transition back into the community. Such trends are especially dangerous in light of the mental illness and violent tendencies that result from prison conditions.
DECATUR, Ala. - A federal judge ordered an Alabama sheriff locked up in his own jail Wednesday after holding him in contempt for failing to adequately feed inmates while profiting from the skimpy meals. U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon had court security arrest Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett at the end of a hearing that produced dramatic testimony from skinny prisoners about paper-thin bologna and cold grits. The sheriff, who showed no emotion when his arrest was ordered, had testified that he legally pocketed about $212,000 over three years with surplus meal money but denied that inmates were improperly fed.
Sheriff needs plans to get out of jail
Clemon, however, said the sheriff would be jailed until he comes up with a plan to provide the 300 jail inmates with nutritionally adequate meals, as required by a 2001 court order. Rhea said a plan may be drawn up Wednesday night and sent to the judge.
Clemon said the Alabama law allowing sheriffs to take home surplus meal money is "probably unconstitutional," but his ruling was limited to the finding that the court order was violated. It didn't address whether the law should be overturned.
"He makes money by failing to spend the allocated funds for food for inmates," Clemon said.
An attorney representing the inmates, Melanie Velez of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, called Clemon's order to take the sheriff into custody "extraordinary." She said she was shocked to learn how much meal money Bartlett was taking home.
Sheriffs in 55 of Alabama's 67 counties operate under the system allowing them to make money operating their jail kitchens. The law pays sheriffs $1.75 a day for each prisoner they house and lets the elected officers pocket any profit they can generate.
The law doesn't require the money to be spent at the jail or within the department; sheriffs can keep it as personal income. They historically have provided little information about profits, so the hearing offered a rare look into a practice that dates back to the Depression.
The sheriff, who showed no emotion when his arrest was ordered, had testified that he legally pocketed about $212,000 over three years with surplus meal money but denied that inmates were improperly fed.
Forced to buy snacks
One after another, 10 prisoners told Clemon about receiving meals that are so small they are forced to buy additional snacks from a for-profit store jailers operated inside the lockup. Most of the inmates appeared thin, with baggy jail coveralls hanging off their frames.
Some prisoners testified they spent hundreds of dollars a month at the store, which Bartlett said generates profits used by the jail for training and equipment.
Inmates told of getting half an egg, a spoonful of oatmeal and one piece of toast most days for breakfast, served at 3 a.m. daily. Lunch is usually a handful of chips and two sandwiches with barely enough peanut butter to taste.
"It looks like it was sprayed on with an aerosol can," testified Demetrius Hines, who said he has lost at least 35 pounds in five months since his arrest on drug charges.
Most prisoners said they supplement the sparse meals by spending $20 a week or more on chips, oatmeal pies and other junk food at the jailhouse store. Some said they buy extra goodies for other prisoners to prevent fights over food. Prisoners said they never received milk until last week, when attorneys from a human rights center began asking about meals in the jail.
Criminal rehabilitation in prison has a lousy record, so when a rehab program works, it deserves all the encouragement it can get - and so it is with the Augusta Transitional Center, and other such centers around the state and nation.
Basically, the centers reduce the number of discharged inmates who commit new crimes and have to be re-incarcerated. This is because the transition centers provide a period of time, from six months to three years, for the men to readjust to life on the outside and to prepare themselves to stay on the outside. The centers are a kind of halfway house where offenders acquire job training, assistance with job placement, cognitive programming, and related support systems such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
"Years ago we would just lock them up and throw away the key," says Superintendent Ronald Brawner, who's been at the Augusta facility for the seven years it's been open. "Now these guys want a fresh start... Without having some sort of transition, they leave the prison without having tools to stay out of trouble".
He's right, of course. Those who have a place to stay and to learn a trade are less likely to commit crimes.
Candidates for the re-entry program must be physically and mentally able to work and have a clean disciplinary record three months before they're released. Nearly 9 million inmates cycle in and out of state and federal transitional facilities each year and only 19 percent of them return to prison, compared to 29 percent that return who don't transition.
Moreover, the re-entry program saves taxpayers money on two counts: first because more ex-inmates are out and working instead of returning to prison and, second, those who get to take advantage of the transition contribute to paying for their own room, board and toiletries.
This is win-win for everybody which is why legislatures in Georgia and elsewhere should allocate more of their criminal justice budgets to transitional centers. They really work. Our state plans to increase the number of transitional center beds by 30 percent over the next year, says the Department of Corrections, which is a good start, but more facilities would be even better.
The Corrections Department budget, like any bureaucracy, should be encouraged to spend its money on programs that work and rid itself of the programs that don't.
From the Friday, January 02, 2009 edition of the Augusta Chronicle
This country puts too many people behind bars for too long. Most elected officials, afraid of being tarred as soft on crime, ignore these problems. Sen. Jim Webb, a Democrat of Virginia, is now courageously stepping into the void, calling for a national commission to re-assess criminal justice policy. Other members of Congress should show the same courage and rally to the cause.
The United States has the world’s highest reported incarceration rate. Although it has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, it has almost one-quarter of the world’s prisoners. And for the first time in history, more than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars.
Many inmates are serving long sentences for nonviolent crimes, including minor drug offenses. It also is extraordinarily expensive. Billions of dollars now being spent on prisons each year could be used in far more socially productive ways.
Senator Webb — a former Marine and secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration — is in many ways an unlikely person to champion criminal justice reform. But his background makes him an especially effective advocate for a cause that has often been associated with liberals and academics.
In his two years in the Senate, Mr. Webb has held hearings on the cost of mass incarceration and on the criminal justice system’s response to the problems of illegal drugs. He also has called attention to the challenges of prisoner re-entry and of the need to provide released inmates, who have paid their debts to society, more help getting jobs and resuming productive lives.
Mr. Webb says he intends to introduce legislation to create a national commission to investigate these issues. With Barack Obama in the White House, and strong Democratic majorities in Congress, the political climate should be more favorable than it has been in years. And the economic downturn should make both federal and state lawmakers receptive to the idea of reforming a prison system that is as wasteful as it is inhumane.
# Senator from Virginia # Former Secretary of the Navy # Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs # Platoon leader with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Vietnam # Awarded the Navy Cross # Awarded a Silver Star # Awarded two Bronze Stars # Awarded two Purple Hearts # Emmy Award winning war reporter # Author of six best selling novels
When Don Kirchner was first imprisoned -- he stuck out like a sore thumb. He didn't look like the other prisoners, he didn't talk like them, he didn't have the tattoos or the swagger -- he was clearly a fish out of water. While we wait for Don's movie to be produced, this video will have to keep his fans satisfied. It describes the similar experience of a new prisoner, unfamiliar with the workings or politics of his environment, and trying to impress the guards on his first day of incarceration. Fortunately, Don was a little more hip.
The Oklahoma Department of Corrections provides public safety by not only ensuring secure confinement but by delivering evidenced-based treatment, education and an array of re-entry services for those returning to communities from confinement. Evidenced-based supervision and services are also provided for those under community supervision. Investment in Oklahoma’s most valuable asset, its citizens, is as paramount an investment as infrastructure such as bridges and roads.
The state has achieved outstanding results with its approach to re-entry. The Bill Johnson Correctional Center in Alva is a prison-based drug treatment therapeutic community that received the American Correctional Association’s prestigious Exemplary Offender Program Award. Offenders who graduate from the program have an amazing 85% survival rate once they return home. There have been 14,341 offenders sentenced to the Community Sentencing Program since its inception in March 2000. The survival rate of graduates is 88%, which is one of the best rates of any community-based alternative program in the country.
Oklahoma discharges over 8,000 prisoners from its prison system each year and has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the nation at 27.8 percent. Their efforts to reduce recidivism are an enhancement to public safety by providing a returning citizen who will remain crime free, thereby reducing future victimization. At an over 70% success rate, that means that over 6,000 prisoners per year are being released that will not return to the prison system. Even though prevention is always a better investment in addressing social illnesses such as substance abuse and a multitude of other contributors to crime, successful re-entry to communities is an investment that pays dividends to many aspects of our communities to include the No. 1 service — public safety.
When I recently addressed a large audience of inmates in a Tennessee prison, I began with the question, "Why am I here?" I paused for a few moments while everyone shifted in their seats and stopped side chatter long enough to wonder what this "smart-ass white boy" could possibly have to say to them. I looked out over the 400-some faces of men that could just as easily have been classmates of mine in school at a different time, or co-workers in the many different jobs I've had over several decades, and instead of looking at a bunch of orange-clad misfits and gladiator types, I saw in their faces a cross-section of America's men...all brothers, fathers, sons, uncles and even grandfathers of someone on the outside.
"Because you matter," I said. "Everyone of you sitting here in this room matters to someone on the outside, and if you're on the planet and breathing, you matter in some way to everyone else here." A silence fell across the cavernous cinderblock room with its steel cell doors that was poetically deafening. All ears and eyes were focused on what I had to say, and by the time I was finished they were on their feet, cheering.
Whether one is in prison of concrete and steel, or of the human mind and emotions, it's just the same: we all matter, and even though that may seem a little daunting to imagine that three billion people on this planet all matter...we do. We all have an impact on others, and eventually what we do, say and even think about ourselves and one another affects the world in some way. We will never know the good that we can do for the world by positively impacting even one other person, who may go on to positively impact thousands. Consider two men in South African prisons in the last century who were scorned and derided and treated as if they couldn't possibly matter to anyone in the world. One was Negro and the other Caucasian. The first was Nelson Mandela and the second Gandhi.
Stop and think for a minute before you consider anyone else being of little importance, and then think about yourself. You never know what that person might be capable of achieving, nor will they know what you are capable of doing or becoming. We all matter, or we wouldn't be here. Treat everyone with just that much regard, and we may live to see the day when the spirit of people like Mandela and Gandhi will be the rule, rather than the exception. Just remember: You matter. And so does everyone else. Everyone else.
NOTE: BEFORE READING THE FOLLOWING ENTRY, YOU MAY ENJOY THIS:
Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin in 1969
Educating the Public
Here are excerpts from an outstanding and insightful article published in the UC Santa Cruz student-run newspaper by Carley Stavis, Arts Editor. It is well worth reading the entire article whose link is at the bottom of this thread.
COLLEGE PROGRAM at SAN QUENTIN
Perched over the San Francisco Bay on the Marin County side of the Richmond Bridge, San Quentin remains the oldest prison in California. The ominous and statuesque facility was built in 1852 by prisoners, for prisoners, and it houses the only death row in the state. The prison is home to the College Program at San Quentin, funded and run by the nonprofit organization Prison University Project (PUP). The College Program at San Quentin represents California prisoners’ ONLY on-site means of completing accredited college classes, such as the U.S. History class in session on Monday nights, in order to earn an Associate of Arts degree.
To date, the program has seen 74 students graduate while still incarcerated, and at any given time, it estimates that between 20 and 30 former students are enrolled in college courses outside of the prison’s confines.
Despite the demonstrated success of the program, it continues to depend entirely on donations and volunteer support. While numerous studies point to the social and financial benefits of investment in programs like the Prison University Project, now in its 12th year of existence, the public and its politicians remain rigid when it comes to the notion of educating the ever-growing, widely re-offending prison population.
According to a New York Times article published in April 2008, while America accounts for only 5 percent of the world’s total population, we house nearly one-quarter of its prisoners, with an estimated 2.3 million people behind U.S. bars.
Studies consistently show that despite public aversion to the idea, providing education tends to be an exemplary means of reducing recidivism, or keeping former inmates from re-entering the prison system post-release.
This opinion can be traced directly to the fact that studies on prison education programs and their post-release effects consistently point to success. A standout among such reports was the Three State Recidivism Study, headed by Stephen Steurer, executive director of the largest international organization of correctional educators, the Correctional Education Association.
The 2001 study looked at more than 3,600 former inmates who had been released for at least three years from prisons in Maryland, Minnesota and Ohio. From a social perspective, the study found that “simply attending school behind bars reduces the likelihood of re-incarceration by 29 percent.”
From a financial perspective, the study reported, “Translated into savings, every dollar spent on education returns more than two dollars to the citizens in reduced prison costs.”
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THE COST OF FREEDOM BLOG
This blog is provided and maintained by Don Kirchner, founder of The Society for Return to Honor, and author of "A Matter of Time" and "Return to Honor". You can write to Don Kirchner at 80 Supai Drive, Sedona, AZ 86351.
"I wanted to take a moment to thank you for your recent correspondence regarding your organization, Society for Return to Honor. As a society is faced with ever increasing crime rates, the need for programs that assist in the re-entry of former convicts into society is becoming more apparent. I commend you for overcoming the difficulties you have faced in your life and taking the initiative to help others in similar situations." -- John McCain, United States Senator.
"I feel your thoughts for juvenile justice programs have merit and commend you for the initiative shown in creating this proposal." -- Barry Goldwater, United States Senator
"The purpose of this letter is to express my appreciation for the assistance that you have been rendering the residents at the Bernalillo County Detention Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico. During the period of you incarceration, you have served as a tutor/counselor for numerous other residents in a sincere effort to help them prepare for better education and improve themselves." -- Michael F. Hanrahn, Director, Bernalillo County Detention Center
"I was impressed with the events in your personal life and the decisions you have made that brought you to this point. It is rare that an individual such as yourself, who has experienced the dangerous and destructive sides of drug trafficking, is able to re focus one’s life into a positive contribution to society." -- Craig N. Chretien, Former #3, Head of DEA
"My sincerest appreciation for your continuing work and effort toward educating the public about incarceration, recidivism and re-entry issues. I have been re-energized by your efforts and dedication to continue development of transition programs and projects designed to successfully assist those incarcerated to re-enter society as law abiding and productive citizens." -- John J. Spearman, Assistant Director of the Arizona Department of Corrections
Vietnam Veteran
Don Kirchner Served as a Chief Warrant Officer and Combat Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam
