Support the Pelican Bay Hunger Strikers!

START DATE: Friday July 1, 2011

TIME: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Location Details:

California State Building, Van Ness and McAllister

Event Type: Protest

Come demonstrate support and solidarity with the Pelican Bay Prison Hunger Strikers on the first day of their courageous and important action.

Fight for their demands to be met:

1. END "GROUP PUNISHMENT" where an individual prisoner breaks a rule and prison officials punish a whole group of prisoners of the same race.

2. ABOLISH "DEBRIEFING" and modify active/inactive gang status criteria. False and/or highly questionable “evidence” is used to accuse prisoners of being active/inactive members of prison gangs who are then sent to the SHU where they are subjected to long-term isolation and torturous conditions. One of the only ways these prisoners can get out the SHU is if they “debrief”—that is, give prison officials information on gang activity.

3. COMPLY with recommendations from a 2006 U.S. commission to “make segregation a last resort” and “end conditions of isolation.”

4. PROVIDE ADEQUATE FOOD. Prisoners report unsanitary conditions and small quantities of food. They want adequate food, wholesome nutritional meals including special diet meals and an end to the use of food as a way to punish prisoners in the SHU.

5.EXPAND AND PROVIDE CONSTRUCTIVE PROGRAMS and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates—including the opportunity to “engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other productive activities...” which are routinely denied. DEMANDS INCLUDE one phone call per week, one photo per year, 2 packages a year, more visiting time, permission to have wall calendars, and sweat suits and watch caps (warm clothing is often denied even though cells and the exercise cage can be bitterly cold).



Jerry Brown, Democratic Leaders Announce Budget Deal!!

Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders announced today that they have reached an agreement on a new majority-vote budget plan.

We've had some tough discussions, but I can tell you that the Democrats in both the Senate and the Assembly have now joined with the administration and myself and we have a very good plan going forward with the budget," Brown said at a press conference in his office this afternoon.

The proposal, outlined in this post, assumes that the state will bring in an additional $4 billion in revenues in the upcoming fiscal year, based in part on higher-than-expected revenue figures in recent months. If those revenues fail to materialize, steeper cuts to programs including K-12 schools, higher education, public safety programs and In-Home Supportive Services would occur later in the year.

"We have severe trigger cuts that will be triggered and go into effect (without the projected revenues)," Brown said. "And those are real."

Brown vetoed the majority-vote budget that lawmakers approved ahead of the Legislature's June 15 budget deadline, calling the package of spending cuts, funding shifts and one-time fixes "not a balanced solution." Legislators have also lost their pay in the wake of Controller John Chiang's decision that the plan approved earlier this month fails to meet the requirements for pay under the voter-approved initiative allowing the budget to be passed with a majority vote.

The governor, who has been working for months to secure Republican votes needed to hold a statewide election on expiring higher tax rates, said without a deal on his original proposal, leaders will have to "look very seriously" at using the initiative process to qualify a measure to secure future revenues.

Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez said Brown and Democrats "have not wavered in our belief that new revenues are essential" to balance the budget over the long term.

"The conversation has been started and we will keep that conversation going as we move to the ballot next year," Pérez said.

Senate Republican leader Bob Dutton criticized the plan unveiled today as a "hope without change" budget.

This latest budget is based on the hope that $4 billion in new revenues will miraculously materialize, but does absolutely nothing to change government as usual," he said in a statement.

Read more about the plan here.http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/06/california-budget-deal-under-discussion-by-gov-jerry-brown-and-democrats.html#more

Categories: Assembly Speaker John A. Perez, Gov. Jerry Brown, Senate lea

Read more: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2011/06/brown-democratic-leaders-annou.html#ixzz1QWPagn8N

HUD Director Encourages Public Housing Authorities to Grant Access to People with Criminal Records

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Director Shaun Donovan sent a letter last week to executive directors of public housing authorities (PHAs) clarifying HUD’s position regarding people with criminal record’s eligibility for public housing. In the letter, which was co-signed by Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing Sandra B. Henriquez, Secretary Donovan encourages PHA executive directors “to allow ex-offenders to rejoin their families in the Public Housing or Housing Choice Voucher programs, when appropriate.”

To view this important letter, go HERE.

“Housing is at the top of the list of what people need to succeed when they return from prison,” said Oklahoma Director of Corrections (and CSG Justice Center board member) Justin Jones. “We are very excited by this news in Oklahoma. It will contribute to public safety by helping people released from prison find a safe, affordable place to live.”

PHA executive directors generally have discretion whether or not to admit people with criminal records to public housing. The only circumstances under which a PHA is required by law to ban a person from federally assisted housing is if he or she was convicted of methamphetamine production on the premises or is subject to a lifetime registration as a sex offender.

Shorter prison time sought for abused women in NY

Associated Press--June 13, 2011

ALBANY, N.Y. — Kim Dadou spent 17 years in prison for manslaughter for shooting her boyfriend as he choked and threatened her in his car. She had called police several times before and used the gun he kept under the passenger seat to kill him.

She was sentenced to 8 1/3 to 25 years, denied parole five times and released in 2008. Now, New York advocates for women prisoners are pushing legislation to cut sentences for domestic violence victims like Dadou, who strike back at abusers or get coerced into committing other crimes.

"When you get caught up in these situations there's no one to protect you," said the 46-year-old Dadou, of Rochester. "Orders of protection are just pieces of paper."

Bill supporters argue that abuse victims pose little threat to anyone other than their abusers. They acknowledge the resentencing measures won't pass this year but say the debate should start following a study from Cornell Law School and the Correctional Association that found limited leniency now for "survivor-defendants."

"It is the beginning of the battle," said Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, a bill sponsor who chairs the Assembly Committee on Correction. "We think there are mitigating issues here a judge ought to be able to consider in crafting a sentence."

The bills would give judges discretion to cut a sentence for first-degree manslaughter, for example, from five to 25 years to one to five years, or to probation with alternative programs.

Prosecutors said victims already get consideration with lesser charges, like manslaughter instead of murder, and lower sentences than others convicted of serious crimes. Also, most domestic violence victims don't commit violence.

"We're trying to focus more on the front end" with efforts to jail abusers, said Franklin County District Attorney Derek Champagne, president of the state district attorneys' association. "There are times when it may not truly be self-defense."

Out of some 2,000 women in state prisons, fewer than 175 could have their sentences cut under Aubry's bill, according to the Correctional Association of New York, the study's co-author. However, more than 200 women are convicted every year for crimes directly related to their abuse and would be potentially eligible for alternate sentencing, said Tamar Kraft-Solar, director of the association's Women in Prison Project.

They canvassed 49 other states, and New York would be the first to enact such a law, Kraft-Stolar said.

Under the legislation, judges could impose alternative sentences if they find the defendant was a domestic abuse survivor, the abuse was a "significant contributing factor" in the crime and the sentence under the general statute would be "unduly harsh."

Some victims said it was not a simple matter of leaving an abuser. They said violence, threats and danger typically escalate when they threaten to leave and that children complicate any attempts to get out of the situation.

The report from Cornell's Avon Global Center for Women and Justice and the association's Women in Prison Project cited state parole statistics showing 80 percent of women sent to New York prisons for a violent felony in 2009 had no prior felony convictions. Of the 38 women convicted of murder and released between 1985 and 2003, not one returned to prison on a new crime in the next three years, the report found.

New York's 1998 sentencing reform, called "Jenna's Law," contained an exception for domestic violence victims from most tough fixed sentences for violent crimes. However, state Sentencing Commission reports a decade later noted the exception had been used only once, for a man who actually got a longer sentence that way.

The report recommended funding alternative programs to cut prison costs and reduce the impact on families, allowing those imprisoned for violent crimes to get merit time reductions and enacting legislation to permit shorter prison terms.

The report also cited a 1999 study of women in New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility finding 94 percent had been physically or sexually abused, and that 75 percent had experienced serious physical violence from an intimate partner as adults.
Link to the report: http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/womenandjustice/upload/From-Protection-to-Punishment-Report.pdf
http://online.wsj.com/article/AP66b1beaff0c24042aeed61dfd113e00c.html

Plata/Coleman- Letter to Gov. Brown and Sec. Cate. Support This- Sign On Now!!

The Hon. Jerry Brown, Governor

State Capitol, Suite 1173
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: (916) 558-3160


The Hon. Matthew Cate, Secretary of CA Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
1515 S Street, Room 113S
Sacramento, CA 95811
Fax: (916) 442-2637


Dear Governor Brown and Secretary Cate,


We are encouraged by the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Plata and hope that it will provide the opportunity to reverse decades of failed and costly criminal justice policy in California. We are encouraged because this decision points a way to bring an end to California’s costly and inhumane commitment to mass incarceration. Over the past three decades, spending on Corrections has grown from around two percent of General Fund spending to ten percent, draining resources away from life-preserving and life-enhancing social services and health programs and forcing massive increases in fees at all three branches of the state’s public higher education system.

We recognize that reducing prison spending alone will not solve California’s deep budget crisis; neither will increased revenues. But a combined approach of increasing revenues and decreasing prison spending will bring us much closer to the kind of California that puts our people first and social services before punishment.


The bold vision of your realignment proposal shows that you are willing and able to envision solutions to move us beyond the stagnant failure of our current system. We have not seen details of how California and the counties will implement realignment, but some discussion in the press causes us concern; whether it is actually an alternative to mass incarceration or merely an expansion of mass incarceration at the county level. We are particularly worried that realignment will become a shell game of reducing the state prison population while increasing the number of people languishing in county jails.


There have been suggestions, especially after the passage of AB 109, AB 111 and AB 94, that realignment will require the construction of tens of thousands more county jail beds and that the goal is simply the transfer of custody responsibility from the state to the counties. Justice Kennedy pointed out in the majority Supreme Court opinion that we cannot build our way out of this crisis. Such an outcome would be a disaster and a wasted opportunity. If the prison boom of the 1980s and 1990s taught us nothing else, we hope we have learned that “if you build them, you will fill them.”


Imagining that we can solve the problem of crowded cells by building more cells has clearly been one of the key failed policy dreams of governors since Mr Deukmejian. Building to reduce overcrowding is what got us to Plata. Replicating that process at the county level is bound to repeat the nightmare conditions that led to Plata and Coleman.


It is important for us to keep in mind that California's prison population increased 7-fold over a 30 year period in which the crime rate dropped, but during that same period over 2,000 new pieces of criminal legislation created new crimes and lengthened sentences for already existing ones. Among the budgetary victims of 30 years of prison building have been the in-prison programs for which California was once a world leader. How, we wonder, will those individuals sentenced to three years in county jail, be provided the sort of programming that might help them in their transition to become contributors to our communities and our state? How will counties provide the medical and mental health care that were at the center of these two lawsuits? Bringing prisoners back to the counties without providing decent conditions of confinement, including contact visits with children and other family members, programming, education, vocational training and drug treatment is inhuman and, possibly, illegal. We cannot afford to create a system that will be the center of serious litigation for years to come.


California counties are already spending anywhere from 70 to 80% of their general fund budgets on public safety, and an inadequately funded public safety realignment plan could mean the elimination or further reduction of parks, libraries and municipal support services for youth and elderly populations in the state.


If realignment is to work and if California is to seize the opportunity that Supreme Court decision presents, we must be bold and innovative in our approach rather than reverting to a building frenzy that has proven both overwhelmingly expensive and ineffective.


The changes California has made to parole policies has been a good first step, but much more is needed. As you are putting together the plan to reduce the prison population, there are dozens of changes to sentencing, parole and credits that would reduce the prison and jail populations, save the state and counties billions of dollars and increase public safety that we urge you to consider. Many are now being used in other states and have been shown to be effective. Several examples include:


• Reform drug sentencing laws by making possession of small amounts of drugs a misdemeanor instead of a felony.


• Make low-level, non-violent property offenses misdemeanors instead of “wobblers” which can be charged as a felony.


• Eliminate the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine by reducing sentence lengths for crack cocaine to the sentence lengths for powder cocaine.


• Amend or repeal juvenile life without parole convictions.


• Eliminate return-to-custody as a sanction for administrative and technical parole violations.


• Provide independent community-based drug, mental health treatment and reentry services to people coming home from prison.


• Parole people serving indeterminate sentences who have reached their parole eligibility dates.


• Provide education and/or job training to every person in prison.


• Expand “good time” credits.


• Release people who are “mentally ill” to community-based mental health treatment programs.


• Release elderly prisoners.


• Release all people who are terminally ill and permanently medically incapacitated by expanding medical parole and utilizing compassionate release.


• Repeal or amend the three strikes law so that the second and third strike must also be classified as “serious or violent”.


• Eliminate the Governorʼs discretion to veto parole recommendations.


Additional strategies to reduce our prison population are outlined in CURB’s Budget for Humanity and 50 ways to reduce the number of people in prison in California.


In any realignment, it is essential that counties be required, or at least be given very strong incentives, to reduce their jail populations so that an influx of those who would have done time at the state level does not lead to further crowding and deteriorization of conditions in county jails. Existing programs like Community Corrections Performance Incentive Grants are one model and the state’s successful realignment of our juvenile system is another. The state must design realignment from the beginning to avoid a massive expansion of county jail facilities and populations that would do little but sow the seeds for 58 more Plata and Coleman suits in coming years.


The Supreme Court has opened a door for us. With your expertise and your leadership, we can take the first important steps to move California, and perhaps the United States, away from the failed policies of mass incarceration and back towards a society that invests our scarce tax resources to develop our people rather than imprison them.


Please contact Emily Harris, Statewide Coordinator for Californians United for a Responsible Budget to set up a meeting to discuss this matter further.


Respectfully,

Lisa Marie Alatorre, Critical Resistance


Glenn Backes, Drug Policy Alliance


Nancy Berlin, California Partnership


Susan Burton, A New Way of Life Reentry Project


Daniel Carillo, Enlace


Kim Carter, Time for Change Foundation


Cynthia Chandler, Justice Now


Linda Evans, All of Us or None


Ruth Wilson Gilmore, the Graduate Center, CUNY


Emily Harris, Californians United for a Responsible Budget


Dolores Huerta, The Dolores Huerta Foundation


Gloria Killian, Action Committee on Women in Prison


Jim Lindburg, Friends Committee on Legislation California


Laura Magnani, America Friends Service Committee


Miss Major, Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex (TGI) Justice Project


Marc Mauer, The Sentencing Project


Kim McGill, Youth Justice Coalition


Jacqueline Miller, Women for Change Foundation


Julia Negron, A New PATH LA - Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing


Dorsey Nunn, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children


Savannah ONeill, Berkeley Needle Exchange Emergency Distribution


Debbie Reyes, California Prison Moratorium Project


Penny Schoner, Prison Activist Resource Center


Geri Silva, Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes

Mailee Wang, Community Works West – Project WHAT!

Deirdre Wilson, California Coalition for Women Prisoners

Roger White, SEIU Local 1000

Clarissa Woo, American Civil Liberties Union Southern California

Californians United for a Responsible Budget

1322 Webster St. #210

Oakland, CA 94612

Phone: 510-435-1176 510-435-1176

Fax: 510-839-7615

www.curbprisonspending.org

CC

Assembly Speaker John Pérez, Fax: (916) 319-2146
Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway, Fax: (916) 319-2134
Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, Fax: (916) 323-2263
Senate Minority Leader Bob Dutton, Fax: (916) 327-2272

Emily Harris
Statewide Coordinator
1322 Webster St. #210
Oakland, CA 94612
510-435-1176 510-435-1176
Californians United for a Responsible Budget
emily@curbprisonspending.org

The Hon. Jerry Brown, Governor
State Capitol, Suite 1173
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: (916) 558-3160

The Hon. Matthew Cate, Secretary of CA Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
1515 S Street, Room 113S
Sacramento, CA 95811
Fax: (916) 442-263

Dear Governor Brown and Secretary Cate,
We are encouraged by the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Plata and hope that it will provide the opportunity to reverse decades of failed and costly criminal justice policy in California. We are encouraged because this decision points a way to bring an end to California’s costly and inhumane commitment to mass incarceration. Over the past three decades, spending on Corrections has grown from around two percent of General Fund spending to ten percent, draining resources away from life-preserving and life-enhancing social services and health programs and forcing massive increases in fees at all three branches of the state’s public higher education system.

We recognize that reducing prison spending alone will not solve California’s deep budget crisis; neither will increased revenues. But a combined approach of increasing revenues and decreasing prison spending will bring us much closer to the kind of California that puts our people first and social services before punishment.

The bold vision of your realignment proposal shows that you are willing and able to envision solutions to move us beyond the stagnant failure of our current system. We have not seen details of how California and the counties will implement realignment, but some discussion in the press causes us concern; whether it is actually an alternative to mass incarceration or merely an expansion of mass incarceration at the county level. We are particularly worried that realignment will become a shell game of reducing the state prison population while increasing the number of people languishing in county jails.

There have been suggestions, especially after the passage of AB 109, AB 111 and AB 94, that realignment will require the construction of tens of thousands more county jail beds and that the goal is simply the transfer of custody responsibility from the state to the counties. Justice Kennedy pointed out in the majority Supreme Court opinion that we cannot build our way out of this crisis. Such an outcome would be a disaster and a wasted opportunity. If the prison boom of the 1980s and 1990s taught us nothing else, we hope we have learned that “if you build them, you will fill them.”

Imagining that we can solve the problem of crowded cells by building more cells has clearly been one of the key failed policy dreams of governors since Mr Deukmejian. Building to reduce overcrowding is what got us to Plata. Replicating that process at the county level is bound to repeat the nightmare conditions that led to Plata and Coleman.

It is important for us to keep in mind that California's prison population increased 7-fold over a 30 year period in which the crime rate dropped, but during that same period over 2,000 new pieces of criminal legislation created new crimes and lengthened sentences for already existing ones. Among the budgetary victims of 30 years of prison building have been the in-prison programs for which California was once a world leader. How, we wonder, will those individuals sentenced to three years in county jail, be provided the sort of programming that might help them in their transition to become contributors to our communities and our state? How will counties provide the medical and mental health care that were at the center of these two lawsuits? Bringing prisoners back to the counties without providing decent conditions of confinement, including contact visits with children and other family members, programming, education, vocational training and drug treatment is inhuman and, possibly, illegal. We cannot afford to create a system that will be the center of serious litigation for years to come.

California counties are already spending anywhere from 70 to 80% of their general fund budgets on public safety, and an inadequately funded public safety realignment plan could mean the elimination or further reduction of parks, libraries and municipal support services for youth and elderly populations in the state.

If realignment is to work and if California is to seize the opportunity that Supreme Court decision presents, we must be bold and innovative in our approach rather than reverting to a building frenzy that has proven both overwhelmingly expensive and ineffective.

The changes California has made to parole policies has been a good first step, but much more is needed. As you are putting together the plan to reduce the prison population, there are dozens of changes to sentencing, parole and credits that would reduce the prison and jail populations, save the state and counties billions of dollars and increase public safety that we urge you to consider. Many are now being used in other states and have been shown to be effective. Several examples include:

• Reform drug sentencing laws by making possession of small amounts of drugs a misdemeanor instead of a felony.

• Make low-level, non-violent property offenses misdemeanors instead of “wobblers” which can be charged as a felony.

• Eliminate the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine by reducing sentence lengths for crack cocaine to the sentence lengths for powder cocaine.

• Amend or repeal juvenile life without parole convictions.

• Eliminate return-to-custody as a sanction for administrative and technical parole violations.

• Provide independent community-based drug, mental health treatment and reentry services to people coming home from prison.

• Parole people serving indeterminate sentences who have reached their parole eligibility dates.

• Provide education and/or job training to every person in prison.

• Expand “good time” credits.

• Release people who are “mentally ill” to community-based mental health treatment programs.

• Release elderly prisoners.

• Release all people who are terminally ill and permanently medically incapacitated by expanding medical parole and utilizing compassionate release.

• Repeal or amend the three strikes law so that the second and third strike must also be classified as “serious or violent”.

• Eliminate the Governorʼs discretion to veto parole recommendations.

Additional strategies to reduce our prison population are outlined in CURB’s Budget for Humanity and 50 ways to reduce the number of people in prison in California.

In any realignment, it is essential that counties be required, or at least be given very strong incentives, to reduce their jail populations so that an influx of those who would have done time at the state level does not lead to further crowding and deteriorization of conditions in county jails. Existing programs like Community Corrections Performance Incentive Grants are one model and the state’s successful realignment of our juvenile system is another. The state must design realignment from the beginning to avoid a massive expansion of county jail facilities and populations that would do little but sow the seeds for 58 more Plata and Coleman suits in coming years.

The Supreme Court has opened a door for us. With your expertise and your leadership, we can take the first important steps to move California, and perhaps the United States, away from the failed policies of mass incarceration and back towards a society that invests our scarce tax resources to develop our people rather than imprison them.

Please contact Emily Harris, Statewide Coordinator for Californians United for a Responsible Budget to set up a meeting to discuss this matter further.

Respectfully,

Lisa Marie Alatorre, Critical Resistance
Glenn Backes, Drug Policy Alliance
Nancy Berlin, California Partnership
Susan Burton, A New Way of Life Reentry Project
Daniel Carillo, Enlace
Kim Carter, Time for Change Foundation
Cynthia Chandler, Justice Now
Linda Evans, All of Us or None
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, the Graduate Center, CUNY
Emily Harris, Californians United for a Responsible Budget
Delores Huerta, The Dolores Huerta Foundation
Gloria Killian, Action Committee on Women in Prison
Jim Lindburg, Friends Committee on Legislation California
Laura Magnani, America Friends Service Committee
Miss Major, Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex (TGI) Justice Project
Marc Mauer, The Sentencing Project
Kim McGill, Youth Justice Coalition
Jacqueline Miller, Women for Change Foundation
Julia Negron, A New PATH LA - Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing
Dorsey Nunn, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
Savannah ONeill, Berkeley Needle Exchange Emergency Distribution
Debbie Reyes, California Prison Moratorium Project
Penny Schoner, Prison Activist Resource Center
Geri Silva, Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes
Mailee Wang, Community Works West – Project WHAT!
Deirdre Wilson, California Coalition for Women Prisoners
Roger White, SEIU Local 1000
Clarissa Woo, American Civil Liberties Union Southern California

Californians United For A Responsible Budget
1322 Webster St. #210
Oakland, CA 94612
Phone: 510-435-1176 510-435-1176
Fax: 510-839-7615
http://www.curbprisonspending.org/

CC:
Assembly Speaker John Pérez, Fax: (916) 319-2146
Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway, Fax: (916) 319-2134
Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, Fax: (916) 323-2263
Senate Minority Leader Bob Dutton, Fax: (916) 327-2272

Emily Harris

Statewide Coordinator

1322 Webster St. #210

Oakland, CA 94612

510-435-1176 510-435-1176

Californians United for a Responsible Budget

emily@curbprisonspending.org

California Women Prisons: Inmates Face Sexual Abuse, Lack Of Medical Care And Unsanitary Conditions

Over the course of 12 years, former inmate Beverly Henry watched hundreds of untreated women die in the Central California Women’s Facility, a sprawling complex in Chowchilla that comprises the largest female prison in the nation.

One woman had liver disease, with eyes "yellow as a warning sign" and two tampons stuck up her nose to stem the bleeding that poured from every orifice. Henry brought her to the prison's clinic where, she said, the two were told to return to work. Within a week, the woman was dead.
"I watched 17 women die in one year," said Henry, now 62, who spent 40 years cycling in and out of the state system for her drug addiction and worked as a peer health educator inside prison clinics during most of her incarceration. "I’ve seen things that make me wish the mind was not so unique that we have the ability to store memories."

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that overcrowding in California's prison system, which houses just over 140,000 inmates but was built to accommodate only 80,000, constitutes cruel and unusual treatment and violates the Eighth Amendment.
The contentious ruling sparked investigations into the abysmal conditions of the state's 30 male prisons, including allegations of race-based discrimination.

But the reports and the Supreme Court ruling largely ignored the state’s three female facilities, where former inmates and prison rights advocates say that 12,000 women live in grossly overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. These women must navigate a host of dangers, including insufficient medical care, sexual abuse by guards and increasing levels of violence between inmates.

Nearly 3,700 women live at Central California Women’s Facility, putting it at more than 180 percent capacity. Eight women pack into cells built for four, sharing one bathroom and shower and each receiving a single locker, one-cubic-foot large, for their possessions. The rooms rarely have adequate ventilation and temperatures soar during the summer months. As in the men’s prisons, the gymnasium has been converted into housing.

A report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women released Friday confirms Henry’s account of fatally poor medical care inside women's prisons.

"Inadequate access to health services in prison and detention facilities is characterized by delays, neglect, and mistreatment of inmates and detainees," wrote the Special Rapporteur, who visited Central California Women’s Facility in addition to two prisons in other states.

"At the core of these health concerns is an inadequate system which is insufficiently responsive to gender-specific needs, including the reproductive health needs of women, and is understaffed and under-resourced," the report said. It particularly condemned the alleged routine practice of shackling inmates during labor.

Female-specific care has been absent in the California system for decades, an oversight that prison-rights advocates say illustrates the "invisible" state of women inmates. When one of the first lawsuits over medical care, for example, was settled in the late 1990s between the Prison Law Office and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the initial settlement decree didn’t include one word about pregnancy, pap spears or reproductive health.

More recently, the Department has come under fire for allowing 116 women to be sterilized through post-partum tubal ligations between 2006 and 2010 at contract hospitals. According to prison-rights advocates, this practice violates both federal law, which does not allow inmates to give informed consent during pregnancy, and California state law, which does not allow the state to pay for the sterilization of institutionalized people, including inmates.

"This is an illegal practice," said Cynthia Chandler, director of Justice Now, a prison-rights organization that learned of the sterilizations through public records requests. "This shows the complete lack of awareness of federal health law. It’s an extension of how little attention has been placed on understanding women's health care needs in prisons."
California Prison Health Care Services, which has been under federal receivership since 2006, does not deny that some sterilizations occured. But Nancy Kincaid, the agency's director of communications, said the procedures happened in outside contract hospitals, where the doctors may not have known the patients were inmates and the state could not have legally paid for the operations. Kincaid said the Department met with all contract doctors in 2010 and informed them the state does not pay for post-partum tubal ligations.

Sexual abuse by male guards constitutes another threat for female inmates that the system has yet to resolve. The U.N. report noted the situation has improved in the last decade due to the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act, citing a 2008-2009 study that found a mere 2.1 percent of female inmates had experienced sexual misconduct from a staff member.
But former California inmates tell another tale.

"Guards have sex and women are harassed by the guards," said Henry. "Women get pregnant; babies are born: These things happen here and the guards are responsible."
Recently, the Department began rationing supplies such as toilet paper, tampons, soap, toothbrushes and toothpaste in order to confront its budget crisis, a policy change that led some inmates to turn to prostitution with guards in order to gain access to these basics.

"It’s indicative of level of desperation," said Chandler, who noted that she’s seen this type of prostitution for basic supplies in women's prisons across the country.
The rationing has also increased tension and unsanitary conditions in the incredibly close quarters.
Each inmate gets a maximum of two tampons and one pad for each day of her period, according to Chandler, which is not enough for many women. In addition, each woman receives only one roll of toilet paper per month. The combination has led to bloody, humiliating scenes rarely seen in the developed world.

Unchecked bleeding in close quarters also poses a significant health risk among a population with high levels of HIV and Hepatitis C, both blood-borne diseases.
And the food remains far from adequate, even by prison standards. According to research by Justice Now, the Department spends twice as much on food for each male inmate compared to each female inmate, even though the caloric difference in meals is only 30 percent.
The conditions of poor food, cramped quarters, increased lockdowns and the debasing lack of sanitation incite higher levels of violence between inmates than ever before.

"Women are a little more subtle in their violent propensities than men, but they do exist," said Henry, who has been drug-free for 15 months and has spent the last two years out of jail -- the longest stretch of freedom in her life since she was 16 years old.

"People really think, 'Oh the women, they’re fine.' No, we’re not. This is a psychological part of slavery that is totally inhumane."
 
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly suggested the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was in charge of medical treatment in California's prison system and misstated Nancy Kincaid's title. The agency in charge is the California Prison Health Care Services, where Nancy Kincaid is the director of communications.

Original Link:
http://huff.to/mv2IXN

Assemblyman Swanson- Says Need for Education Programs Critical for Inmates!

AB 216 ADDRESSES RE-ENTRY NEEDS OF FORMER

INMATES, SAVING STATE MILLIONS

Lawmakers Recognize Need for AB 216 after Recent U.S. Supreme Court Decision

(Sacramento, CA)—AB 216, a measure which will decrease California’s 70 percent recidivism
rate by increasing the educational opportunities available in state correctional facilities, passed
the Assembly with overwhelming bipartisan support yesterday.

In light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring the Department of Corrections and

Rehabilitation to reduce the inmate population by 46,000, Assembly member Swanson

explained the significant need for education programs for inmates. “Education is a critical

component to rehabilitating inmates and ensuring their successful transition back into society.

AB 216 is part of a larger re-entry strategy that will address the Supreme Court mandate and the

safety of our communities by significantly reducing the likelihood that released inmates will

commit new crimes.”


“We currently spend over $49,000 a year housing each prisoner in state correctional facilities

and that cost does not include the incalculable damage done to our communities when those

former inmates commit new crimes. It is better for our state to invest money upfront on training

and educating inmates who will eventually be released into our communities, rather than have

them re-enter society without the tools necessary to keep them off the streets and out of prison,”

concluded Swanson.


Research is clear that education programs in correctional institutions are the best way to reduce

recidivism. AB 216 would create incentives for community colleges to offer courses in state

correctional facilities while removing provisions that restrict community colleges from offering

courses in state prisons.

AB 216 passed the Assembly with a 76 to 0 vote and now moves to the Senate.