Repackaging Mass Incarceration

by JAMES KILGORE

Since my CounterPunch article last November which  assessed the state of the movement against mass incarceration, the rumblings of change in the criminal justice have steadily grown louder. Attorney General Eric Holder has continued to stream his mild-mannered critique by raising the issue of felony disenfranchisement; the President has stepped forward with a proposal for clemency for people with drug offenses that could free hundreds. In the media, we’ve seen a scathing attack on America’s addiction to punishment in the New York Times and the American Academy of Sciences has released perhaps the most comprehensive critique of mass incarceration to date, the 464 page The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. In late May, several dozen conservatives including Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and former NRA President David Keene pulled together the first Right on Crime (ROC) Leadership Summit in Washington DC.

The ROC, an organization which boasts a coterie of members with impeccable right wing credentials, reiterated the need for conservatives to drive the process of prison reform. The Conference  “call to action” argued: “In our earnest desire to have safer neighborhoods, policy responses to crime have too often neglected core conservative values — government accountability, personal responsibility, family preservation, victim restoration, fiscal discipline, limited government and free enterprise.” Gingrich engaged in similar kinds of soul searching:  “Once you decide everybody in prison is also an American then you gotta really reach into your own heart and ask, is this the best we can do?”

All of this has precipitated another round of optimistic cries about the possibilities of a Left-Right Coalition on mass incarceration, including a high profile Time Magazine op-ed co-authored by Norquist and MoveOn.org co-founder Joan Blades.

While the spirit of reconciliation in criminal justice attracts most of the media attention, a number of pieces have also emerged rejecting any rush to positive judgment.  For example, fellows at the Brennan Center compiled a statistically based report which contends that careral change has not yet turned the corner while Black Agenda Report co-founderBruce Dixon asserted that Obama’s clemency measures would have no significant impact on mass incarceration.

However, another process, likely at least as important in the long run as number crunching, coalitions or clemency also has been gaining steam. The official voices of incarceration- politicians, corrections officials, private prison operators, prison guards unions and county sheriffs, are exploring changing discourse and cosmetic reform in order to avoid systemic restructuring. In the business world, they call this re-packaging.

Re-Packaging Mass Incarceration: Carceral Humanism

Currently this re-packaging assumes several forms.  One of the most important is carceral humanism or what some people refer to as incarceration lite.  Carceral humanism recasts the jailers as caring social service providers. The cutting edge of carceral humanism is the field of mental health. According to a recent report by the Treatment Advocacy Center, in 2012 the US had over 350,000 people with serious mental health issues in prisons and jails as compared to just 35,000 in the remaining state mental health facilities.  Prisons and jails have become the new asylums and the jailers are waking up to the fact that mental health facilities also represent a new cash cow. Likely the most important examples of carceral humanism are happening in California. There Governor Jerry Brown has played a shell game called realignment in which he’s transferred thousands of people from state facilities to county jails in order to comply with a Federal court order to reduce the state prison population. To help counties adapt to all these new prisoners, the Governor put up $500 million to the state’s sheriffs to build extensions onto their jails. In response, the Sheriffs had to come to Sacramento to pitch for a slice of that money. They didn’t come talking about public safety. Their mantra focused on caring-providing opportunities and improved circumstances for those in custody. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s summary from Lake County, one of the 15 winners out of 36 submissions, is illustrative:

“$20 million for a new Type II, 40-bed women’s jail with a new stand alone 39-bed Medical/Mental Health Services building with program space, a new administration building, and renovations so that existing space can accommodate programs.”

The new jails are about institutionalizing the funding of mental health and other services behind the walls, further diverting money from the already bare bones social services in communities.  The Lake County proposal also featured another prominent strain of carceral humanism- a woman’s jail or in the present corrections jargon, a “gender-responsive” facility. Since mainstream research now argues that women experience incarceration differently than men, law enforcement is waving the gender banner to access more funding for construction.  Los Angeles lies at the cutting edge in this regard. In March the LA Board of Supervisors authorized $5.5 million for consultants to draw up a plan for what some law enforcement people are calling a “women’s village.” Deputy Sheriff Terri McDonald of Los Angeles suggested that the new facility could be a place where “women and children could serve their time together.”

Carceral humanism has also surfaced in the repackaging of immigration detention centers.  The latest immigration prisons carry the label “civil detention” centers. The GEO Group, the nation’s second largest private prison operator, opened their latest such facility in Karnes Texas. TheLA Times called it a “pleasant surprise for illegal immigrants.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials boast that people detained in Karnes won’t be housed in cells but in “suites” holding eight people.  Those detained will be supervised not by guards or correctional officers but by “resident advisers.”

Repackaging 2: Non-Alternative Alternatives to Incarceration

A second form of repackaging mass incarceration falls under the heading of non-alternative alternatives to incarceration. These non-alternatives purport to change things but in essence simply perpetuate the culture of punishment.  The most common forms of these are Drug Courts, Mental Health Courts and Day Reporting Centers. While many of these may be well-intentioned and in some cases have positive effects, they typically involve heavy monitoring of a person’s behavior including frequent drug testing, limitations on movement and association, a whole range of involuntary but supposedly therapeutic  programs of dubious value and very little margin of error to avoid reincarceration.  Perhaps the most extreme example of a non-alternative alternative to incarceration, and one which is likely to gain increasing traction, is electronic monitoring.

While advocates claim electronic monitoring facilitates employment, building family ties and participation in community activities, my interviews with a number of people on a monitor have revealed a different experience.  Jean – Pierre Shackelford, who spent two years on an ankle bracelet in Columbus, Ohio said that he felt like his probation officer had him in a “choke hold” while he was on an ankle bracelet. He labelled monitoring “another form of control and slavery, 21^st century electronic style.” Shaun Harris, on a monitor for a year in Michigan called it a form of privatized incarceration, “it’s like you just turned my family’s house into another cell” was his comment. Shackelford and Harris, like many others I spoke with, both reported difficulty getting movement for family activities and a lack of clarity about what was and wasn’t permitted.  Shackelford finally took to going to church because that seemed to be the only activity his probation officer would approve.  Both Shackelford and Harris, like most people interviewed, complained that they could be put on 24 hour “lockdown” (meaning they couldn’t leave the house at all) for any reason for an indefinite period and there would be no way to appeal such a decision.  Even a late return home from work due to a delay in public transportation could result in a re-arrest. To make matters worse, most electronic monitors come with a daily user fee which ranges anywhere from five to twenty dollars a day.

While the punitive nature of ankle bracelet regimes is a cause for concern, the potential to implement exclusion zones with GPS-based monitors contains more serious long-term implications.  Exclusion zones are places where monitors are programmed not to let people go.  At the moment authorities mainly use exclusion zones to keep individuals with a sex offense history away from schools and parks. But such zones have the potential to become new ways to reconstruct the space of our cities, to keep the good people in and the bad people out.  This technology, which can be set up via smart phones, holds the possibility to turn houses, buildings, even neighborhoods into self-financing sites of incarceration.  In the meantime, firms like the GEO Group, which owns BI Incorporated, the nation’s largest provider of electronic monitoring technology and backup services, are experimenting with new target groups for ankle bracelets. In parts of California and Texas they’ve used electronic monitors on kids with school truancy records. Under a $370 million contract, BI already has thousands of people awaiting immigration adjudication on monitors. Packaged as an alternative these bracelets actually represent a new horizon for incarceration, finding ways to do it cheaper with technology through the private sector and then getting the user to pay, likely a  model that would line up squarely with Right on Crime’s notions of reform..

Re-Packaging: Why Now?

Most commentators attribute the spirit of change in criminal justice to a belated recognition of the fundamental irrationality of spending so much money locking up so many people for so long.  As Grover Norquist put it, “Conservatives may have wanted more incarceration than was necessary in the past, so what we’re trying to do is find out about what works.”

Such analyses make perfect sense but they also ignore a big picture political question. Mass incarceration is becoming a flash point of rebellion and resistance, with African American communities the most visible hot spot. Mass incarceration and the racialized vagaries of criminal justice have been going on for decades but recently we’ve seen new levels of anger and frustration in reaction to the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant, as well as to the sentencing of Marissa Alexander.  Even mainstream Black commentators like Melissa Harris-Perry appear incensed.  At the grassroots level we’ve witnessed campaigns against stop and frisk, solitary confinement, mandatory minimums, crack cocaine laws and a host of new jails and prisons.  On the ideological plane, the notion of the New Jim Crow, categorizing  mass incarceration as a new form of slavery and segregation is catching on.  People are latching onto the idea of mass incarceration as a systemic problem that can only be solved with a vast redirecting of resources into the communities that have been devastated by imprisonment.  In other words, mass incarceration requires a total paradigm shift. The situation has the potential to explode.  Politicians and business people don’t like explosions.  When explosions appear a genuine possibility it is time to talk reform, time to re-package.

To make matters worse for purveyors of the carceral status quo, the immigrants’ rights movement has also been erupting over the last decade. From the immigrant worker strikes and demonstrations of 2006 to the endless string of demonstrations by the Dreamers and the Dream Defenders in the face of continued mass deportations, a steady stream of unrest has materialized.  With the changing national demographics, key players in criminal justice need to be seen to be doing something if they want to maintain their power.

Lastly, there is the movement inside the prisons themselves.  The hunger strikes at Pelican Bay in California and in Washington’s Northwest Detention Center coupled with the outpouring of solidarity these actions prompted,  pose a serious threat to the already heavily smeared image of US prisons. In addition, even once notorious political prisoners are gaining increasing legitimacy. Captives from across several generations are attracting large coteries of supporters.  This includes high profile individuals who have served decades behind bars, individuals  like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Albert Woodfox, Oscar Lopez Rivera, Russell Maroon Shoatz and Leonard Peltier, along with more contemporary prisoners like Lynne Stewart (recently released), Marie Mason and Chelsea Manning. Inside and beyond the walls, there is rebellion in the air.

This reality raises another question: whether a Left-Right Coalition can deliver even enough change to calm the waters. Mass incarceration has become such a fundamental part of how the US addresses issues of race, crime, poverty, gender and inequality, it appears unlikely to collapse from gradual reforms whether inspired by carceral humanism, punitive alternatives to incarceration or more genuine critique. As with civil rights, pressure from below will be required, from a social movement that has the creativity to envision an alternative, the skills and legitimacy to mobilize the people who are most directly affected, and the political power to make their voices be heard and get others to join them. Perhaps this social movement is, to borrow a phrase from the Spanish poet Antonio Machado, making the path by walking at this very moment.

James Kilgore is a Research Scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign).  He is a frequent commentator on mass incarceration, a social justice activist, and the author of three novels, all of which were written during his six and a half years of incarceration.  He is currently working on a primer on mass incarceration to be published by The New Press in 2015. He can be reached at waazn1@gmail.com   His writings are available at his website, www.freedomneverrests.com

via: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/06/repackaging-mass-incarceration/

San Quentin plans psychiatric hospital for death row inmates

Under court pressure to improve psychiatric care for deeply disturbed death row inmates, state officials are moving quickly to open a 40-bed hospital at San Quentin prison to house them.

The court-appointed monitor of mental health care in California's prison system reported to judges Tuesday that about three dozen men on death row are so mentally ill that they require inpatient care, with 24-hour nursing.

For now, they are being treated in their cells, but the state plans to have a hospital setting ready for them by November, according to documents filed Tuesday in federal court.

The plan calls for taking over and retrofitting most of a new medical unit recently built at the prison. A spokeswoman for the court's prison medical office said San Quentin officials plan to use medical facilities at other prisons if a shortage of beds arises as a result.

The urgency of psychiatric treatment for the mentally ill prisoners demands swift action, the court's monitor, Matthew Lopes, said in court papers. He said an agreement to provide the psychiatric wing at San Quentin was made possible by collaborative effort among the state, courts and prisoners' lawyers.

In December, after weeks of courtroom testimony on the treatment of about 10 unidentified death row prisoners, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ordered the state to provide condemned inmates access to inpatient psychiatric care. The court files show negotiations and planning began almost immediately.

Karlton also ordered mental health screenings of all 720 condemned men at San Quentin. Those evaluations concluded in late May with the identification of 37 condemned men for admission to the psychiatric unit. Lopes' report notes that San Quentin is bound to need room for additional patients.

Twenty female prisoners who are sentenced to die and housed elsewhere are not covered by Karlton's order.

Some analysts see irony in providing for the long-term mental health of those sentenced to die.

"This is the only place on Earth where you'd be talking about building a psychiatric hospital for condemned prisoners," said Berkeley law professor Franklin Zimring, who has written about the U.S. capital punishment system. "It is a measure of American greatness and American silliness at the same time."

Federal courts have ruled that it is unconstitutional to execute people who are not aware of what is happening to them. "We are curing them to make them executable," Zimring said.

But San Francisco prisoners' rights lawyer Michael Bien, who argued the San Quentin case in court last fall, regards adequate psychiatric care as a fundamental right.

"The reality is these guys are going to live in this place for a long time, and you need to see they get the care they need," Bien said.

California, with the nation's largest death row, has not killed a prisoner since 2006. Later that year, state executions were stayed when condemned inmate Michael Morales challenged the lethal injection procedures.

The state attempted to adopt new protocols involving different drugs in 2010, but they remain under legal challenge.




In the interim, 44 inmates have died of age, disease, drug overdose or suicide, with the latter raising concerns about psychiatric care on death row. One of those who committed suicide was Justin Helzer, who helped his brother kill five people and dump their dismembered bodies into a Sacramento river in 2000.

According to last year's testimony, Helzer was found by San Quentin doctors to be delusional and schizophrenic and often refused medication. In 2010, he blinded himself by jabbing pens through the sockets of his eyes. In 2013, he made a noose out of his bed sheet and hanged himself in his cell.

Corrections officials had testified that psychiatric care for death row inmates was limited. Those sent to a psychiatric hospital within another state prison were quarantined from the rest of the population, limiting therapy.

San Quentin had set up unlicensed beds, providing the equivalent of outpatient treatment within a corner of its medical building. Karlton found both provisions inadequate.

Unlike other psychiatric hospitals within men's prisons, the one at San Quentin will be run by the corrections department and not the Department of State Hospitals.

Gov. Jerry Brown's administration has not sought legislative approval for the San Quentin project. Finance Department spokesman H.D. Palmer said the state plans to use savings in prison mental health services elsewhere in the state to run the unit.

Northern California leaders frame their position on water bond

Cynical observers of California politicssometimes assume the real reason for a new statewide water bond is to pay for projects that take water from the north and ship it south. But on Monday, a number of Northern Californialeaders made it clear they are prepared to support a water bond for the November ballot – under certain conditions.

About three dozen politicians and water managers representing the North State Water Alliance convened on the Capitol steps Monday to outline for lawmakers five general principles they believe must guide a water bond. They were joined by several collaborators from environmental and business groups.

The five principles: Existing water rights’ priorities and laws must be maintained; a bond should contribute to sustainable groundwater management; it should strongly emphasize water conservation and recycling; it should include projects to restore critical migratory corridors for salmon and waterfowl; and any money dedicated to new reservoirs should pay for dedicated environmental benefits and enhanced flexibility of the California water system as a whole.

“We have issues related to water that can only be fixed with a water bond, and we need to fix it with this Legislature,” said Bryce Lundberg, chairman of the alliance and owner of Lundberg Family Farms, a major rice-growing enterprise in Butte County. “We’re asking you for your strong leadership and rapid resolve that will move these criteria forward.”

There are currently seven different bond measures proposed in the Legislature that propose varying amounts of public spending on new dams, water conservation and habitat restoration projects. All are intended to replace an $11 billion bond measure approved for the ballot in 2009, but which was twice delayed because lawmakers feared it was too large and too packed with pork-barrel spending.

The Legislature faces a June 26 deadline to place a bond on the November ballot, although it could tweak the rules to delay into late August. A two-thirds vote by lawmakers is required, which means the bond will need bipartisan support.

Given the severe drought gripping California, it would seem an ideal time to offer voters a major water infrastructure bond. But the subject is always controversial because it involves big public debt for divisive projects like new dams.

“What brings us together today is a recognition that negotiations over a state water bond are coming to a head,” said Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, also a member of the alliance. “We want to show our strength in Northern California on this very important issue. This coalition stands ready to be a part of a solution.”

Partners in the North State Water Alliance include the Sacramento Metro Chamber of Commerce, Sacramento Regional Water Authority, Sacramento Area Council of Governments, Mountain Counties Water Resources Association and the Northern California Water Association.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/06/10/6470386/norcal-leaders-frame-their-position.html#mi_rss=State%20Politics#storylink=cpy

California trio introduces gun bill

WASHINGTON -- Nearly two weeks after a mass shooting left seven people dead in Isla Vista, a trio of California’s Democratic lawmakers introduced federal legislation intended to keep guns out of the hands of people who poses a risk of committing violence.

The Pause for Safety Act, sponsored by Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein with Rep. Lois Capps of Santa Barbara, would enable family members and others to seek a court order to stop a dangerous person from purchasing or possessing a firearm.

“We must do everything in our power to keep firearms out of the hands of those who pose a serious risk of harm to themselves or to others,” Feinstein said.

On May 23, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people, then himself, in a rampage near theUniversity of California at Santa Barbara. Rodger was undergoing treatment for mental illness and family members worried he might hurt himself or others. But law enforcement officers didn’t see any red flags when they interviewed him before the shooting spree.

“It is haunting to me that the family of the gunman was desperate to prevent an act of violence and alerted police, but they were still unable to stop this tragedy,” Boxer said.

Feinstein knows the issue personally. In November 1978, former San Francisco Supervisor Dan White shot and killed both Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall. Feinstein, then president of the Board of Supervisors, found her colleagues’ bodies, and it fell to her to deliver the shocking news to the media.

Though a series of mass shootings in recent years in Virginia, Arizona, Colorado and Connecticut drove a new push for stricter gun laws, gun-rights groups have pushed back. A bipartisan bill to broaden background checks for gun purchases failed in the U.S. Senate last year, as did an effort by Feinstein to renew a ban on military-style assault rifles.

The latest bill comes as members of Congress are preoccupied with midterm elections. TheNational Rifle Association has typically opposed any legislation, state or federal, that seeks to limit firearms possession, and has funded efforts to defeat lawmakers who support such measures.

“Unfortunately this is another tragedy that was not prevented by gun control and there’s not ... another gun control law that could have been passed that would have prevented this awful situation from happening,” NRA spokesman Chris Cox said on a radio program this week, referring to the Isla Vista shootings.

via: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/06/05/6462105/california-trio-introduces-gun.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/06/05/6462105/california-trio-introduces-gun.html#storylink=cpy

CSU plans to hire 600 to 700 new faculty by fall

The California State University plans to hire 600 to 700 full-time positions by this fall as both the CSU and UC systems struggle to hire more tenure-track faculty in light of recent budget cuts.

California State University San Bernardino College of Education

An allotment of $125 million from the state last year to the CSU system helped fund 470 new faculty positions. The proposed allocation for this year’s budget is $142.2 million each for the CSU and UC systems, although they are requesting an additional $95 million and $124.9 million, respectively. Steven Filling, chair of the CSU Academic Senate, stressed that with the net loss of 59 CSU faculty members last year, more funds are needed to support faculty positions.

“Ideally, we’d get new money for additional faculty and therefore better services for students. Then we wouldn’t have to turn away students who are qualified,” Filling said. “Increase in teachers, increase in classes offered.”

CSU students can expect to see new tenure-track professors in the classroom by fall. But the net hiring impact at the end of the academic year may only be about 250 with retirements and resignations factored in, according to C. Judson King, director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education. Additionally, temporary or part-time positions may be taken over by new tenure-track faculty.

Meanwhile, the UC system wants to use $21.8 million of the extra $124.9 million they are requesting to fund hiring new faculty, buying new equipment and enrolling 2,100 more students, according to UC spokesperson Dianne Klein.

Gov. Jerry Brown previously pushed UC and CSU schools to reduce costs themselves through online courses and flexible curriculum.

“Right now, the state legislature is in negotiations, so we’re hopeful,” Klein said. “(The $124.9 million) is not a wish list, per se. It’s our very best effort, and we’re looking under every rock.”

Caitlin Quinn, 2014-2015 ASUC external affairs vice president, said she hopes the UC system will follow the CSU system’s lead and acquire more funding to prevent departments like Gender and Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies from shrinking.

“I think it’s good to see a big influx of faculty for the students, and as UC students, we should be in solidarity with the CSU students and advocate for more faculty and funding here,” Quinn said.

The CSU has about 23,000 faculty, including tenure-track, full-time, part-time and temporary positions. According to Filling, the CSU system falls far below meeting the 75 percent tenure-track recommendation of a resolution passed by the state legislature in 2001.

“In the intervening years, we’ve taken more students and the classes get bigger,” Filling said. “When they do, we start to not do as much of the thing that makes that successful, which is develop relationships directly with students.”

via: http://www.dailycal.org/2014/06/03/csu-plans-hire-600-700-new-faculty-fall/

California 2014 primary election complete results

This page will update through the night with the latest results from today's California primary. In contests for statewide office, Congress and the Legislature, candidates who finish first and second—regardless of party—will compete against one another in November. This “top two” system, modeled on nonpartisan local elections, was approved four years ago by voters. Local contests in which no candidate captures a majority of votes may also lead to fall runoffs.

http://graphics.latimes.com/calif-primary-election-results-2014/

Get Out Your Vote Today!

After months of campaigning, tens of millions of dollars in outside spending and plenty of hand-wringing over whether turnout would reach a new low, California's 2014 primary election is finally upon us. 

Across the state today, voters (though probably not very many of them) will be selecting the top two candidates for eight statewide offices, 100 legislative seats and 53 congressional races, as well deciding the fates of two propositions and countless local initiatives, county supervisor positions and judgeships.

Capitol Alert will be bringing you results, analysis and video all night long on sacbee.com. Check back for complete coverage after the polls close at 8 p.m.

via: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/06/am-alert-voters-head-to-polls-for-primary-election.html

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2014/06/am-alert-voters-head-to-polls-for-primary-election.html#storylink=cpy