By Dianne Frazee-Walker Sweden is doing something to lower the recidivism rate and forcing prisons to close because they are taking a different approach to crime and punishment. Globally, we need to pay close attention to what Sweden is doing. The sentences are not as long in Sweden, which makes prison authorities realize the work
Ian Manuel / Image courtesy www.askthejudge.info By Dianne Frazee-Walker Debbie Baigrie was a stay-at-home mother of two. Ian Manuel was a lost 13-year-old boy raised in a dysfunctional environment, who had already been arrested 16 times. Baigrie is white, and Manuel is black. Today Bairgie and Manuel share an unlikely close relationship with each other.
By Dianne Frazee-Walker According to educator and author David Chura, advocating for prison reform does not mean being “soft on crime.” What it does mean is people who can see the truth are tired of watching the prison system working against crime and safety. When Chura and other prison reform advocates propose approaches to lower
Alabama’s prison system is the first – and currently only – in the nation to require visitors to be fingerprinted. In late 2012, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) implemented the new policy due to what officials claimed was a need for greater efficiency. A new computer system had the capacity to scan fingerprints, something the old system was not able to do. The fingerprinting procedure was “part of the upgrade” and the brainchild of the ADOC’s IT department, according to prison system spokesman Brian Corbett.
The old system required guards to review each visitor’s driver’s license to verify their identity before allowing them into a state prison.
“That was a time-consuming task,” Corbett told the Montgomery Advertiser. “Now, the verification process is much faster, so visitors are moved through the process much faster.”
“We still require visitors to have a government-issued photo ID, and that requirement will remain in place,” he added. “But there are times when someone else resembles the photo on an ID. Scanning the fingerprint of visitors verifies they are who they say they are.”
The program prompted an immediate response from the American Civil Liberties Union. David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, didn’t buy the ADOC’s purported security concerns.
By Clio Chang / USNews.com The New York City Department of Corrections has decided to eliminate solitary confinement for inmates aged 16 and 17 by the end of the year. This resolution is a response to public criticism of abusive conditions at Rikers Island, which houses more than 12,000 of the city’s inmates. The jail
By Lois Davis / AL.com According to the Department of Justice, in 2012, Alabama had the third-highest imprisonment rate in the United States, trailing only Louisiana and Mississippi. A fierce debate has erupted over what to do to reduce overcrowding in Alabama prisons at a time when the state’s budget is tighter than ever. The possibility
One of the best videos about the problem of mass incarceration in the United States. Being tough on crime is not the same as being tough on criminals. Mass incarceration is a waste of money and a waste of people.
By Christopher Zoukis / Prison Legal News
Rick Raemisch, Colorado’s new corrections director, wanted to better understand the experience of solitary confinement – so he spent a night in segregation at a state prison.
Raemisch had been on the job for seven months when he decided to stay overnight in an ad seg cell at the Colorado State Penitentiary. “I thought he was crazy,” said Warden Travis Trani, who added, “I also admired him for wanting to have the experience.” Trani received only nine hours notice that his boss was arriving for an extended visit.
On January 23, 2014, just after 7:00 p.m., Raemisch, handcuffed and shackled and wearing a prison uniform, entered cell 22. He was classified as “RFP,” or “Removed From Population.” After being uncuffed through the food slot he was left alone in the 7-by-13-foot cell.
In an editorial published in The New York Times on February 20, Raemisch said the experience was challenging.
“First thing you notice is that it’s anything but quiet. You’re immersed in a drone of garbled noise: other inmates, blaring TVs, distant conversations, shouted arguments. I couldn’t make sense of any of it, and was left feeling twitchy and paranoid,” he wrote. “I kept waiting for the lights to turn off, to signal the end of the day. But the lights did not shut off. I began to count the small holes carved in the walls. Tiny grooves made by inmates who’d chipped away at the cell as the cell chipped away at them. For a sound mind, those are daunting circumstances. But every prison in America has become a dumping ground for the mentally ill, and often the ‘worst of the worst,’ some of society’s most unsound minds, are dumped in Ad Seg.”
Image courtesy theguardian.comBy Christopher Zoukis
No one needs convincing that prison is probably a lonely place, filled with hostile guards and dangerous inmates. At least from the Hollywood point of view, the only comfort for most convicts is a letter from home or the occasional visit from family or friends. Sadly, though, a new study indicates that many prisoners do not even have the solace of visitors from outside, and that the average inmate receives only two visits during their entire length of incarceration.
Prisoner Visitation’s Connection to Recidivism
Consistent with previous research, a recent study published in the journal Crime and Delinquency indicates that Florida prisoners who regularly receive visitors do better during their stay behind bars and upon re-entry into the community than those who don’t receive frequent visits. “Visitation helps individuals maintain social ties during imprisonment, which, in turn, can improve inmate behavior and reduce recidivism,” the authors of the study wrote. “Not being visited can result in collateral consequences and inequality in punishment.”
Those Who Receive Few to No Visits
Necessarily implied by the study’s findings is that many prisoners receive no visitors at all. Those who are older, black, or have been incarcerated numerous time had the fewest visitors. White, Latino, younger, and newly incarcerated inmates received the most visits. Economic status and the length of a prisoner’s sentence did not factor into the likelihood of visitors.
By Matt Clarke / Prison Legal News
Two studies by the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin found that juveniles held in Texas jails while awaiting trial as adults are often isolated with no access to education programs, and that violence remains prevalent in state juvenile facilities in spite of recent reforms.
Texas’ juvenile system, which has been renamed the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD), was rocked by months of violence during 2012 in the agency’s six secure facilities – especially the Giddings State School and Corsicana Residential Treatment Center. The spike in violence echoed widespread reports of abuse and misconduct in 2007 that resulted in substantial changes in the state’s juvenile justice system.
For the first study by the LBJ School of Public Affairs (LBJ), 41 jails were asked to complete a survey related to incarcerated juveniles, their access to programs and whether they were separated from adult prisoners. The results indicated there were few prisoners under the age of 17 held in Texas jails – only 34 during the survey months of October and November 2011. The survey also showed that in 30 of the jails – roughly three-fourths – adults and juveniles were incarcerated separately. However, the report noted that juveniles might come into contact with adult prisoners during showers, recreation or meals.
“National research indicates that juveniles in adult facilities are five times more likely to be victims of sexual abuse and rape than youths who are kept in the juvenile system,” according to the report.
On May 7, 2012, two days before the LBJ report was released, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a ruling requiring jails to separate adult and juvenile prisoners.
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