9. March 2009 by Rev Young.

 As our country has moved into this very large economic crises, states are scrambling to find solutions to budget short falls.  As they are looking for funds, organizations like the PEW Charitable Trust, continue to investigate and report on one of the largest budget drains in the United States.  The practice of incarceration, probation and parole.  When you read the staggering numbers below, I want to remind you that for every person that is currently under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections or Judicial Departments, there are at least 10 family members that are adversely affected.  With that said, if you take the number of people in this nation that are currently incarcerated, on probation or parole (at the state level only) and multiply that by 10, we have 73,000,000 people that are impacted by the our current practices.  If these practices were successful in rehabilitating and reforming individuals and families then this would be palatable.  However, we have created a huge revolving door of destruction and loss for a large portion of our population in the United States.  This oppresses our families, weakens our communities and drains our economies.  Isn’t it time we look for a better plan? 

States urged to improve probation, parole programs

By DAVID CRARY – 1 day ago

NEW YORK (AP) — The number of people on parole and probation across the United States has surged past 5 million, according to a new report which says financially struggling states can save money in the long run by investing in better supervision of these offenders.

The Pew Center on the States report, released Monday, says the number of people on probation or parole more than tripled to 5.1 million between 1982 and 2007. Including jail and prison inmates, the total population of the U.S. corrections system now exceeds 7.3 million — one of every 31 U.S. adults, it said.

The report also noted huge discrepancies among the states in regard to the total corrections population — one of every 13 adults in Georgia at one end of the scale, one of every 88 in New Hampshire at the other extreme. The racial gap also was stark — one of every 11 black adults is under correctional supervision, one of every 27 Hispanic adults, one of every 45 white adults.

The report notes that construction of new prisons will be increasingly rare as most states grapple with budget crises. It said improved community-supervision strategies represent one of the most feasible ways for states to limit corrections spending and reduce recidivism.

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” said Susan Urahn, managing director of the Center on the States. “The economy opens a window of opportunity to do things that are not always easy to do.”

At present, according to the report, prisons consume nearly 90 percent of state corrections spending, even though two-thirds of offenders under supervision are on parole or probation. Costs per year for a prison inmate average nearly $29,000, while average costs for managing parolees and probationers range from $1,250 to $2,750 a year.

Adam Gelb, director of Pew’s Public Safety Performance Project, stressed that violent and incorrigible criminals need to be locked up, but contended that many prison inmates could be safely overseen in their communities at far lower cost.

“New community supervision strategies and technologies need to be strengthened and expanded, not scaled back,” he said. “Cutting them may appear to save a few dollars, but it doesn’t. It will fuel the cycle of more crime, more victims, more arrests, more prosecutions, and still more imprisonment.”

Among the report’s recommendations for strengthening community corrections:

_Base intervention programs on sound research about what works to reduce recidivism.

_Use advances in supervision technology such as electronic monitoring and rapid-result alcohol and drug tests.

_Create incentives for offenders and supervision agencies to succeed, and monitor their performance.

_Impose swift, certain sanctions for offenders who break the rules of their release.

The report cited a probation program in Hawaii as a positive example. Under that program, which offers extensive counseling and treatment, failure to comply with random drug tests, office visits and treatment requirements is met with immediate sanctions — typically a few days in jail. Participants have proven far less likely than others on probation to be arrested for new crimes and sent back to prison.

Arizona was praised for a law enacted last year that creates performance incentives for offenders and the county-based probation supervision system. For every month that an offender complies with the terms of supervision, the length of probation can be shortened by up to 20 days. Slip-ups result in a loss of the earned time.

Kansas has made headway in curbing its prison population by offering grants to community corrections programs that cut down on the high number of probation and parole rule-breakers being sent back to prison solely for such rule violations.

The Pew report says strong community supervision programs for low-risk offenders not only cost much less than incarceration but, when properly funded and managed, can cut recidivism by as much as 30 percent. That could be a huge boon to the states, which, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, spent a record $51.7 billion on corrections last fiscal year — up 300 percent over two decades.

The five states with the highest rate of adults under correctional supervision were Georgia, Idaho, Texas, Massachusetts and Ohio, the report said. Those with lowest rates were New Hampshire, Maine, West Virginia, Utah and North Dakota.

According to Pew’s figures, Idaho had 48,663 people on probation in 2007 — the key factor in its ranking. Idaho corrections officials said the figure was too high, based on their count of about 26,900 offenders on supervised probation, but they did not immediately provide figures on additional offenders on unsupervised probation.

Georgia, although only the ninth most populous state, had more people on probation in 2007 — 435,631 — than any other state, according to the report. The state Department of Corrections said the number might be inflated by double-counting of some offenders, but it has previously acknowledged that its probation population is the highest per capita in the country.

One consequence, according to the department, is that Georgia probation officers have had a caseload far higher than the national average.

Gelb said advanced technology could be used to improve supervision without necessarily hiring more personnel. For example, he said some states now allow parolees and probationers to periodically report to an ATM-like kiosk, rather than to a person in a state office.

In any case, said Gelb, states could double or triple the amount they spend supervising parolees and probationers, and still come out ahead financially if the result was a reduced prison population.

In Alaska, where construction is set to begin soon on a new medium-security prison, the corrections commissioner said he agreed with the thrust of the Pew report.

“Confinement is the foundation of the system, but we are trying to move away from the philosophy that incarceration will solve the problem,” said Joseph Schmidt. “What we are hoping is that we don’t grow our prison population to a point where we can’t afford it.”

On the Net:

• Pew report: http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/

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9. March 2009 by admin.

MARCH 06, 2009

Eleven year old charged as an adult
by Pat Nolan
Would you put this 11 year old in prison for the rest of his life?

Prosecutors in Pennsylvania have charged an 11-year-old boy as an adult for
murdering his father’s girlfriend. They said that they intend to ask that he
be imprisoned for the rest of his life under Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Life
Without the Possibility of Parole (LWOP) statute. Let me be clear: what the
boy did is awful, and there should be consequences for it. But those
consequences should include reforming his moral compass, rather than writing
him off as unsalvageable. Putting him in an adult prison for the rest of his
life is essentially denying the young boy the possibility of redemption and
rehabilitation.

It surprises most people to realize that in forty-two states and under
federal law, a child under 18 who commits a serious crime is classified as
an adult for prosecution and punishment. In some states, children as young
as ten are transformed instantly into adults for criminal justice purposes.
Remember, these children are too young to buy cigarettes and alcohol, too
young to shave, often too young to drive. Many of these kids still have
stuffed animals on their beds. Yet, they are tried as adults, and if
convicted, they are sent to adult prison, often for life without any
possibility of parole.

There are currently at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the United States
who are imprisoned for the rest of their lives for crimes they committed as
children. These are not “super-predators” with long records of vicious
crimes. In fact, an estimated 59 percent of these youngsters received the
sentence for their first-ever criminal conviction.

The crime this boy committed was horrible. He hid a shotgun under a blanket
and calmly walked downstairs and shot his father’s girlfriend in the back of
her head. This is a shocking crime. But it was also his first run-in with
the law. Despite his clean record, state law requires that he be charged as
an adult. And the District Attorney said he expects the boy to spend the
rest of his life in prison.

Remember, this is an 11-year-old child. Yet he was imprisoned in the local
jail with other adults. The jail had no orange jumpsuit that could fit his
slight frame. To isolate him from the adult prisoners, the boy was held in a
10×10 cell. He could not take a shower because that would require the jail
to lock down every prisoner to allow him to walk to the showers without
coming in contact with the adult prisoners. Mercifully, after several days
the sheriff insisted that the boy’s needs be taken care of, and he was
transferred to a juvenile facility.

This brief bit of common sense and mercy may soon be eliminated by a justice
system intent on keeping him in prison until he dies.

You can hear the cry of frustration in the voice of a father facing a
similar future with a child in an adult prison:

I’m a former cop.  I’m a true believer in law and order.  But my son was a
child when this happened.  He wasn’t thinking like an adult, and he wasn’t
an adult…how is it that the law can treat him as if he is one?

– Frank C., father of youth offender sentenced to live without parole,
October 22, 2004.

The terrible crimes committed by children can ruin lives, causing injury and
death to the victims and grief to their families and friends. Sentencing
must reflect the seriousness of the crime, but it also must acknowledge that
culpability can be substantially diminished by reason of the youth and
immaturity of the perpetrator. Child offenders should be given the
possibility of freedom one day when they have matured and demonstrated their
remorse and capacity for rehabilitation.

There is a movement across the country to eliminate life sentences for
youthful offenders. The bills would not automatically release the offenders
at a certain age, but rather offer the possibility that they could be
released if they had shown they were prepared to lead a law-abiding life in
the community.

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