Clarke faces a fight over probation overhaul

UK: The home secretary, Charles Clarke, yesterday confirmed his plans to abolish 42 local probation boards and instead create "a vibrant mixed economy" in the management of 200,000 offenders in the community.

He intends to take over the statutory duty of the local boards to provide probation services and enable a Whitehall network of 10 regional "offender managers" to put them out to tender to private companies and voluntary organisations or remain with the public sector.

"This is not about cost-cutting: it is about driving up standards and improving value for money. It is not about privatisation. It is about finding the best provider for the job," said Mr Clarke.

But the Home Office consultation paper published yesterday makes clear that the local probation boards are to be abolished and replaced with new probation "trusts" which will be packed with senior financial and business people so they can "win contracts in the first place in a competitive environment" and then manage performance so the standards specified in the contracts are met.

Public probation trusts which fail to win any business, or enough to sustain their overheads, will cease to exist, says the consultation paper. It envisages that the changes will come into effect in April 2007, the centenary of the 1907 Edwardian legislation which set up a public probation service in Britain.

The decision has provoked widespread opposition. Martin Wargeant of the Probation Boards' Association warned that they would fight the proposal, saying they "shouldn't be competing over the carcass of the Probation Service" with private companies.

Harry Fletcher of Napo, the probation officers' union, said that fragmentation and privatisation would drive down standards, cut wages and lead to less cooperation and not more between criminal justice services: "Probation is not a business but a viable public service."

Neil Gerrard, Labour MP and chair of the justice unions parliamentary group, said he believed the overwhelming majority of MPs were disturbed by the proposals, which went much further than the initial plan to open up the Probation Service.

But Neil Bentley, director of public services for the CBI, welcomed the plans. "Plainly when half of all crime is committed by those who have already been through the system then radical change is essential," he said.

By Alan Travis posted 22 Octobrer 05

Related:

The devilish advocate
UK: The devilish advocate John Hirst taught himself law in jail, and has never lost a case against the prison service. Erwin James meets up again with the former 'lifer' who won inmates the right to vote.

Racism still rife in jails, five years after the murder of Zahid Mubarek UK: The prison service will be strongly criticised for continued racial discrimination against ethnic minority inmates by the official report from the Zahid Mubarek inquiry.

UK prisoners should get vote, European court rules
UK: Laws setting out who can and cannot take part in elections are to be rewritten after the European court of human rights today ruled in favour of giving British prisoners the right to vote.

Prison plan 'will cut reoffending'
UK: A network of community prisons to help cut the number of criminals who re-offend has been outlined by Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

Clarke to scrap plan to peg prison numbers
UK: The home secretary, Charles Clarke, has said he is to abandon his predecessor's aspiration of pegging the prison population in England and Wales at 80,000. He will also drop plans to put a legal obligation on the judges' sentencing guidelines council to take the size of the prison population - currently 77,000 and rising - into account when laying down the "going rate" for major crimes.

Crowded jails 'boosting suicides'
UK: The chief inspector of prisons warned that an overcrowding crisis in Britain's jails was leading to an increase in prisoner suicides.

Chief justice calls for new approach to law and order
UK: The retiring [ruling class] lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, made a passionate plea for a new approach to law and order which would see a major shift away from punishment towards the solution of problems which generate crime.

Britain's only prison ship ends up on the beach
UK: The last inmates have departed and a skeleton staff is left guarding Britain's only prison ship - in case anyone is minded to break in rather than out.

Throw away the key
The one profession to get results on recidivism has been sacrificed to Labour's desire to lock up criminals in private prisons.

Judges' misdeeds will remain secret
UK: Judges who are disciplined for bad behaviour will not have the findings against them made public under a complaints regime to be launched next year.

Prisoner total rises 15% in six years
England and Wales are continuing to jail offenders at a higher rate than any other major country in western Europe, it emerged today. New research indicates that the government's use of prison as its main tool of penal policy has increased by 15% since 1999.

CPS drops prosecution over death in custody
UK: The family of Roger Sylvester, who died after being restrained by police officers, yesterday expressed their disappointment at a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute any of the officers involved.

Prisoner's cell death
UK: A prisoner was found hanged in his cell last week, the Home Office said, fuelling criticism over the soaring number of suicides in custody.

Plans for five new 'superprisons'
Recent figures show a total of 75,550 prisoners were held in 139 jails in England and Wales, nudging up the previous record of April 2004 by just six inmates.

Prison has lost its way - report
UK: Bristol prison is suffering wide-ranging problems because of inconsistent management, the Chief Inspector of Prisons has said.

Row over acupuncture for prisoners
UK: The Home Office has responded to criticism over prison inmates who are being offered acupuncture on the NHS in order to relieve stress.

Number of prisoners sent back to jail trebles
UK: The number of prisoners being sent back to jail after release has nearly trebled in the past five years, according to a report published today.

Top judge says crowded prisons cannot break cycle of crime
UK: Reoffending rates after a prison sentence are at an "unacceptably high level" and the failure of the criminal justice system to stop prisoners reoffending should shock the public, England's top judge, [Ruling Class] Lord Woolf, said last week.

All the World's a Prison: History
No doubt many of my readers, even those who are well-educated or widely read, think that the prison -- the place where dark deeds are darkly answered[2] -- is an ancient institution, a barbaric hold-over from barbaric times. In fact, the prison is of relatively recent origin, and this tells us a great deal about the pretentions and realities of modern times, and the wisdom and high degree of development of the ancients.

Decade after inspector left in disgust, report tells of filth
UK: Dirty, mice-infested cells, high levels of self-harm, and widespread bullying over drugs and medications were just some of the damning findings of a report into conditions at Holloway, Britain's largest women's prison.

Most women 'should not be jailed'
Women make up 6% of the prison population in England and Wales. Imprisonment of women should be "virtually abolished", a prison reform group has said.

Youth 'murdered for officers' pleasure'
UK: An Asian teenager was murdered by a white racist after they were placed in the same cell as part of a game to fulfil the "perverted pleasure" of prison officers, a public inquiry heard on Friday.

Deaths in isolation as prison segregation increases
The use of segregation [solitary confinement] of prisoners as punishment has been increasing recently in Australia, the US, and the UK. Segregation can be used for protection or punishment, but in both cases it results in extreme psychological stress. An indication that segregation is being over-used is the appearance of deaths in custody from suicide of those placed in segregation.

Inquest blames jail for overdose death
UK: An inquest jury returned a verdict itemising a catalogue of faults at Styal prison in Cheshire, concluding that the prison's "failure of duty of care" contributed to the death of Sarah Campbell, 18, who took an overdose of tablets on the first day of her three-year sentence.

Put in the way of self-harm in a place intended to protect others
UK: Sarah Campbell, 18, spent the last hours of her life in the segregation unit of Styal prison, Cheshire. "The seg", as those places are referred to, used to be known as "the block", short for punishment block. [ Seg is a bullshit word for Punishment, Solitary Confinement, Torture, Mental Illness, Self-Harm, Human Rights Abuse and that is State Terror.]

Britain 'sliding into police state'
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, is transforming Britain into a police state, one of the country's former leading anti-terrorist police chiefs [false flag police chiefs] said yesterday.

UK solitary confinement
UK: Segregation units are prisons within prisons - the places where the most unchecked brutality is meted out to prisoners. In recent years conditions in high security segregation units have deteriorated, and the use of long-term segregation as a control mechanism has increased.

Inquiry must root out prison racists
UK: It is difficult to imagine a more brutal murder than that of Zahid Mubarek. The 19-year-old was clubbed to death by his cellmate at Feltham Young Offender Institution in the early hours of 21 March 2000. He was due to be released just a few hours later.

Prison suicides soar as jails hire 'babysitters'
UK: Prison officers are being taken off suicide watch and replaced by unqualified 'babysitters' because the system is overwhelmed by an epidemic of self-harm.

Plan to sell off juvenile jails as job lot
UK: The government is to put out to tender all its dedicated juvenile jails that hold children under 18 in a departure in Whitehall's privatisation programme.

Failure to sack 'racist' prison staff condemned
UK: Two prison officers suspended for racism are still on full pay three years after a stash of Nazi memorabilia, neo-fascist literature and Ku Klux Klan-inspired 'nigger-hunting licences' was found in a police raid on their home.

Report slams 'unjust' jailing of women on remand
UK: Six out of 10 women sent to jail while they await trial are acquitted or given a non-custodial sentence, a report published today reveals. Introducing the report, Lady Kennedy QC calls for a complete review of the use of remand and bail for women saying it is "inhumane and unjust".

Concern as UK prison suicides hit record level
UK: More prisoners took their own lives in English jails in August than in any other month since records began, prison reformers said today.

End of years of despair as Holloway closes its doors
But now Holloway prison in north London - where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, was hanged in 1955 - has been earmarked for closure, along with several other women's prisons, which have been hit by a spate of suicides.

How detox and self-help brought suicide jail back from the brink
UK: Six suicides in 12 months made Styal jail notorious and the Prisons Ombudsman criticised the prison and its staff for serious failures. But things are changing.

Belmarsh detainees consider suicide, says freed man
UK: The first of the Muslim detainees released from Belmarsh high security prison after being held on suspicion of terrorism has told the Guardian his fellow prisoners are suffering such severe mental problems that they constantly consider suicide.

Suicides and unrest have soared, admits Home Office
UK:The already overcrowded prison population is set to go on rising and will top 80,000 within the next three years, a senior Home Office civil servant warned yesterday.

England tops the EU in imprisonment
England and Wales jail more offenders per capita than any other European, Union country, according to new figures.

Chief justice calls for new approach to law and order

UK: The retiring [ruling class]lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, made a passionate plea for a new approach to law and order which would see a major shift away from punishment towards the solution of problems which generate crime.

Lord Woolf suggests a shortlist of four strictly limited categories of offenders who might be imprisoned and - in sharp contrast to the rhetoric of government ministers - he adds: "We need wider understanding and acceptance that the principles of sentencing are not just founded on punishing offenders."

Lord Woolf is stepping down in September after five years as the most senior criminal judge in England and Wales. His comments come in a response to the Guardian's two-year investigation into the criminal justice system, which uncovered fundamental weaknesses. The heads of prisons, drug treatment and the new National Offender Management Service (Noms) also respond in the paper.

Lord Woolf argues for a fundamental change in the use of imprisonment, restricting its use to the most dangerous offenders and the most serious crimes, as a recognition of special offences and as a fall-back where all other efforts have failed. But his stress is on the need to find more effective ways of cutting crime.

"Whilst I firmly believe that for serious and violent crimes there is no alternative to a custodial sentence, I also believe passionately on taking steps to turn people away from crime," he writes.

"We do not want a system that shuts people outside society, once they have left the prison gates."

He highlights the failure of current measures to prevent reoffending: "All of us working within the system must aim to do much better than that."

He supports moves towards restorative justice, which sees offenders making amends to their victims; and he suggests there might be a wider use of the approach taken with young offenders by the Youth Justice Board, which pulls together different agencies in a concerted attack on the roots of crime: "I see great value in looking at the specific needs and problems of particular groups."

He welcomes the creation of the new Noms but, in an aside which may irritate Whitehall, he acknowledges concerns, highlighted in the Guardian series, that the Home Office is struggling to manage the creation of the new service.

His comments come as the prison population in England and Wales shows alarming signs of surging upwards. On Friday, it reached a new high of 76,877 with predictions that it may break through 77,000 this week - despite the fact that August normally sees a drop in imprisonment.

Courts are apparently being driven into tougher sentencing by the recent outbreak of punitive rhetoric from government ministers, led by the prime minister's comments on young people wearing hoodies. This week a court sentenced a teacher who had had sex with a 14-year-old pupil to 15 months in jail.

Lord Woolf has a history of standing up to ministers and other hardliners over this kind of rhetoric. In May he spoke out against the overcrowding of prisons immediately after the chief constable of Hampshire, Paul Kernaghan, had called for yet more offenders to be jailed.

Last year, he clashed with the former home secretary, David Blunkett, and the Sun newspaper, both of whom attacked his proposal to reduce the time served in prison by murderers who plead guilty. He has also challenged the lord chancellor's intervention in the appointment of judges for public inquiries.

In his response, the chief executive of Noms, Martin Narey, defends the organisation, which is merging prisons and probation. But he is outspoken about the past failings of probation, conceding that reporting to courts was "close to collapse"; some leaders of probation did not believe their clients were capable of being educated, even though this was one of their priorities; and that the caricature of community penalties being badly enforced was "uncomfortably close to reality".

By Nick Davies posted 18 August 05

The Long Trail to Apology

Native America: All manner of unusual things can happen in Washington in an election year, but few seem so refreshing as a proposed official apology from the federal government to American Indians - the first ever - for the "violence, maltreatment and neglect" inflicted upon the tribes for centuries.

Restorative Justice Practices

Restorative Justice Practices of Native American, First Nation and Other Indigenous People of North America. This is part one in a series of articles about restorative justice practices of Native American, First Nation and other indigenous people of North America. The series is not intended to be all-inclusive, but rather a broad thematic overview. A related eForum article, "The Wet'suwet'en Unlocking Aboriginal Justice Program: Restorative Practices in British Columbia, Canada," can be read at:

Restorative Justice and the Law

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."-- Marilyn vos Savant.

Government justice not personal justice

Mr Brett Collins of Justice Action said, "Victims should be looked after properly by implementing restorative justice measures and victims should be compensated for their pain and suffering. " However prisoners are entitled to serve their sentences in peace and privacy as well."

Sentencing: Violent crime and practical outcomes

In addition introducing restorative justice programs giving the offender a chance to interact with the offended person if they wish and visa-versa. People are not "dogmatic" therefore should be given a second chance opposed to Life means Life!

Sentencing reform

Beyond Bars is making a submission (with a focus on alternatives to custody) to the sentencing council. "We should consider the alternatives which take into account victims' interests and involvement. Restorative justice. Also mentoring as a positive form of social support, coupled up to restorative justice (as the punishment) to satisfy those who demand it."

RESTORING TRUE JUSTICE:

Australian prisons are fast becoming the new asylums of the third millennium. The prison industry is booming, while Australia spends far less on mental health services than similar countries.

Some Practicalities Of Emptying The Prisons [287]

Given the importance that prisons and punishment have in maintaining control of increasingly restless populations, the task of achieving the release of the people in the jails and the closure of those institutions, seems daunting. But it is so vital to the 2nd Renaissance that we must find ways to do it.

Related:

Britain's only prison ship ends up on the beach
UK: The last inmates have departed and a skeleton staff is left guarding Britain's only prison ship - in case anyone is minded to break in rather than out.

Throw away the key
The one profession to get results on recidivism has been sacrificed to Labour's desire to lock up criminals in private prisons.

Judges' misdeeds will remain secret
UK: Judges who are disciplined for bad behaviour will not have the findings against them made public under a complaints regime to be launched next year.

Prisoner total rises 15% in six years
England and Wales are continuing to jail offenders at a higher rate than any other major country in western Europe, it emerged today. New research indicates that the government's use of prison as its main tool of penal policy has increased by 15% since 1999.

CPS drops prosecution over death in custody
UK: The family of Roger Sylvester, who died after being restrained by police officers, yesterday expressed their disappointment at a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute any of the officers involved.

Prisoner's cell death
UK: A prisoner was found hanged in his cell last week, the Home Office said, fuelling criticism over the soaring number of suicides in custody.

Plans for five new 'superprisons'
Recent figures show a total of 75,550 prisoners were held in 139 jails in England and Wales, nudging up the previous record of April 2004 by just six inmates.

Prison has lost its way - report
UK: Bristol prison is suffering wide-ranging problems because of inconsistent management, the Chief Inspector of Prisons has said.

Row over acupuncture for prisoners
UK: The Home Office has responded to criticism over prison inmates who are being offered acupuncture on the NHS in order to relieve stress.

Number of prisoners sent back to jail trebles
UK: The number of prisoners being sent back to jail after release has nearly trebled in the past five years, according to a report published today.

Top judge says crowded prisons cannot break cycle of crime
UK: Reoffending rates after a prison sentence are at an "unacceptably high level" and the failure of the criminal justice system to stop prisoners reoffending should shock the public, England's top judge, [Ruling Class] Lord Woolf, said last week.

All the World's a Prison: History
No doubt many of my readers, even those who are well-educated or widely read, think that the prison -- the place where dark deeds are darkly answered[2] -- is an ancient institution, a barbaric hold-over from barbaric times. In fact, the prison is of relatively recent origin, and this tells us a great deal about the pretentions and realities of modern times, and the wisdom and high degree of development of the ancients.

Decade after inspector left in disgust, report tells of filth
UK: Dirty, mice-infested cells, high levels of self-harm, and widespread bullying over drugs and medications were just some of the damning findings of a report into conditions at Holloway, Britain's largest women's prison.

Most women 'should not be jailed'
Women make up 6% of the prison population in England and Wales. Imprisonment of women should be "virtually abolished", a prison reform group has said.

Youth 'murdered for officers' pleasure'
UK: An Asian teenager was murdered by a white racist after they were placed in the same cell as part of a game to fulfil the "perverted pleasure" of prison officers, a public inquiry heard on Friday.

Deaths in isolation as prison segregation increases
The use of segregation [solitary confinement] of prisoners as punishment has been increasing recently in Australia, the US, and the UK. Segregation can be used for protection or punishment, but in both cases it results in extreme psychological stress. An indication that segregation is being over-used is the appearance of deaths in custody from suicide of those placed in segregation.

Inquest blames jail for overdose death
UK: An inquest jury returned a verdict itemising a catalogue of faults at Styal prison in Cheshire, concluding that the prison's "failure of duty of care" contributed to the death of Sarah Campbell, 18, who took an overdose of tablets on the first day of her three-year sentence.

Put in the way of self-harm in a place intended to protect others
UK: Sarah Campbell, 18, spent the last hours of her life in the segregation unit of Styal prison, Cheshire. "The seg", as those places are referred to, used to be known as "the block", short for punishment block. [ Seg is a bullshit word for Punishment, Solitary Confinement, Torture, Mental Illness, Self-Harm, Human Rights Abuse and that is State Terror.]

Britain 'sliding into police state'
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, is transforming Britain into a police state, one of the country's former leading anti-terrorist police chiefs [false flag police chiefs] said yesterday.

UK solitary confinement
UK: Segregation units are prisons within prisons - the places where the most unchecked brutality is meted out to prisoners. In recent years conditions in high security segregation units have deteriorated, and the use of long-term segregation as a control mechanism has increased.

Inquiry must root out prison racists
UK: It is difficult to imagine a more brutal murder than that of Zahid Mubarek. The 19-year-old was clubbed to death by his cellmate at Feltham Young Offender Institution in the early hours of 21 March 2000. He was due to be released just a few hours later.

Prison suicides soar as jails hire 'babysitters'
UK: Prison officers are being taken off suicide watch and replaced by unqualified 'babysitters' because the system is overwhelmed by an epidemic of self-harm.

Plan to sell off juvenile jails as job lot
UK: The government is to put out to tender all its dedicated juvenile jails that hold children under 18 in a departure in Whitehall's privatisation programme.

Failure to sack 'racist' prison staff condemned
UK: Two prison officers suspended for racism are still on full pay three years after a stash of Nazi memorabilia, neo-fascist literature and Ku Klux Klan-inspired 'nigger-hunting licences' was found in a police raid on their home.

Report slams 'unjust' jailing of women on remand
UK: Six out of 10 women sent to jail while they await trial are acquitted or given a non-custodial sentence, a report published today reveals. Introducing the report, Lady Kennedy QC calls for a complete review of the use of remand and bail for women saying it is "inhumane and unjust".

Concern as UK prison suicides hit record level
UK: More prisoners took their own lives in English jails in August than in any other month since records began, prison reformers said today.

End of years of despair as Holloway closes its doors
But now Holloway prison in north London - where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, was hanged in 1955 - has been earmarked for closure, along with several other women's prisons, which have been hit by a spate of suicides.

How detox and self-help brought suicide jail back from the brink
UK: Six suicides in 12 months made Styal jail notorious and the Prisons Ombudsman criticised the prison and its staff for serious failures. But things are changing.

Belmarsh detainees consider suicide, says freed man
UK: The first of the Muslim detainees released from Belmarsh high security prison after being held on suspicion of terrorism has told the Guardian his fellow prisoners are suffering such severe mental problems that they constantly consider suicide.

Suicides and unrest have soared, admits Home Office
UK:The already overcrowded prison population is set to go on rising and will top 80,000 within the next three years, a senior Home Office civil servant warned yesterday.

England tops the EU in imprisonment
England and Wales jail more offenders per capita than any other European, Union country, according to new figures.

Harmful, Undeserved Punishment

US: Nearly five million American citizens are denied the right to vote - one of every 50 citizens. That includes 13 percent of all African-American men nationwide, up to almost twice that percentage in particular states and the majority of adults - black and white -- in some inner city neighborhoods.

All have been found guilty of committing felonies. Some are in prison, some on probation, some on parole. One-third are neither prisoners nor on probation or parole, but nevertheless remain disenfranchised because they are ex-convicts.

Fourteen of the state laws that govern such matters bar ex-cons from ever voting. Others restore their voting rights after waiting periods of several years following completion of their sentences or leave that decision to the governor or state legislature. Only about a third of the states allow offenders to vote while on parole or probation, and only two - Maine and Vermont - allow them to vote while they're still in prison.

It perhaps makes sense to deny the vote to prisoners as part of their punishment, but otherwise the laws make no sense. Once the offenders' sentences are completed, once they've paid their debt to society, there's no moral or legal justification for further punishment. What's needed, often badly needed, is rehabilitation. Ideally, ex-cons should re-enter society quickly as actively participating citizens with all the rights of citizenship.

"Voting is a fundamental right in a democracy, it's not a privilege," notes Joseph "Jazz" Hayden, an ex-con who's one of leaders of a movement to grant voting rights to all offenders. "In prison you lose your liberty, but you don't lose your citizenship."

Of course it's quite possible that some, maybe many, ex-cons might not want to become good citizens. But if they aren't even allowed to try, if they are forced to remain voiceless in the critical matter of choosing political leaders, if they are to be taxed without representation, it gives them all the more reason to remain alienated from others and resume their anti-social conduct.

Lawmakers in every other industrialized nation understand this. They may deny the vote to offenders convicted of election fraud or other official corruption, but otherwise generally allow convicts and ex-convicts to vote.

What's more, polls show that the American public overwhelmingly supports granting voting rights to all convicted felons once their sentences are served.

But though the restrictions on voting have been eased in a handful of states, the vast majority of cons and ex-cons are still being denied the full rights of citizenship - and their numbers have been soaring, thanks largely to the steep and steady increase in convictions for drug-related offenses.

Fear of being perceived as "soft on crime" meanwhile has kept most politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, from extending any rights to any felons, past, present or future.

That public opinion nevertheless favors extending the rights is indicative of what sociologist Chris Uggen of the University of Minnesota describes as a culture clash that's pitting "two social trends against each other - the tough-on-crime movement against the expansion of civil rights."

Studies by Uggen show that felons' votes could be decisive in tight elections. He found that if ex-cons had been allowed to vote in Florida, where they are barred for life from voting, Democrat Al Gore would have won the state and thus the presidency in 2000. Uggen also found that if felons nationwide had been allowed to vote in congressional races, Democrats probably would now control the Senate. It's true, at any rate, that a high proportion of felons are from minority groups that typically vote heavily Democratic.

Ironically, many of the state laws limiting felons' voting rights stem from those used in southern states after the Civil War to deny the vote to the African-Americans who had just been freed from slavery. The laws, which kept even those with only minor criminal records from voting, were later used along with poll taxes and literacy tests to keep most black southerners from the polls.

And now we're using the laws to deny votes to 1.4 million African-American citizens and to more than 3.5 million other citizens. Many undoubtedly did commit serious crimes and should be punished for it, but none deserve the penalty of losing their vote, a loss that does great and unnecessary harm to them and to all of society.

ZNET

Related:

How Denying the Vote to Ex-Offenders Undermines Democracy
For starters, hundreds of thousands of people who are still eligible to vote will not do so this year because they will be locked up in local jails, awaiting processing or trials for minor offenses.

Prisoners must get right to vote, says court
UK: The government will be forced to lift a ban on prisoners voting dating back to 1870 after the European court of human rights ruled yesterday it breached a lifer's human rights.

Fighting for Florida: Disenfranchised Florida Felons Struggle to Regain Their Rights US: TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Gov. Jeb Bush looked out over a roomful of felons appealing to him for something they had lost, and tried to reassure them.

Felons and the Right to Vote One of the greatest achievements of the civil rights struggle was the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which removed most of the obstacles that kept African Americans away from the ballot box and enabled Americans who did not speak English to vote. But the voting rights movement never reached the last excluded segment of our democracy: our prisoners.

Justice Action: Access to our community
NSW: Justice Action went to the NSW Supreme Court before the last Federal election on the constitutional right for prisoners to receive information for their vote. The government avoided the hearing by bringing prisoners' mobile polling booths forward. We pursued it after the election. This is the report.

REPORT: AUSTRALIAN PRISONERS' ELECTION NEWSPAPER
There was high drama as the only state prisons department in Australia to refuse the The Australian Prisoners' Election Newspaper, was challenged in an emergency hearing before the NSW Supreme Court.

'HOW TO VOTE' MATERIAL BANNED
Australian voters have been blocked from receiving 'how to vote' material from the political parties.

Emergency Supreme Court action for prisoners' vote
Renowned constitutional lawyer, George Williams QC, assisted by Ben Zipser of Selborne Chambers and Joanne Moffit of Kingsford Legal Centre will argue for the right of prisoners to receive voting information in the form of The Australian Prisoners' Election Newspaper. The newspaper has been banned by the prisons commissioner, Mr. Ron Woodham. No explanation has been given.

RE: URGENT - Prisoner enrolment to vote!
Justice Action has been talking to the Australian Electoral Commission over the past three weeks about what steps were being taken to ensure that prisoners were given the opportunity to enrol to vote in the Australian Election on October 9.

Prisoner's right to vote attacked again!
On the eve of the election the Howard government has rushed a new law into the Parliament which will further remove the rights of prisoners to vote.

Howard wants prisoner vote ban
Politicians opposed to a federal government plan to ban all prisoners from voting were soft on crime, Special Minister for State Eric Abetz said.

Govt moves to strip prisoners' voting rights
The Australian Council for Civil Liberties has condemned a Federal Government move to stop prisoners voting. Under current laws, prisoners serving less than five years can vote.

Custody as the challenge to corrections

The custodial environment is justified in terms of a variety of principles of punishment.

Despite their problematic nature, however, recidivism figures do not suggest that the prison component of a sentence improves prospects for deterrence or rehabilitation, by comparison with other sentencing options.

In a recent UK Home Office review of punishment outcomes, 59 per cent of prisoners discharged from prison in 1998 were re-convicted within two years of release.

As for community corrections, despite a high level of successful completions (over 80 per cent), the actual re-conviction rate remained around 55 per cent.

The crucial distinguisher, therefore, may be the economic and emotional cost of imprisonment, against negligible comparative benefit on the recidivism score.

While Weatherburn suggests that higher imprisonment rates have some impact on crime rates, the best figures he can draw are a 10 per cent increase in the prison population bringing about a 2-4 per cent reduction in crime.

Translated to current NSW punishment practice, that would mean that an investment of around $350,000 might register a minimal crime rate drop. If the same was to be spent on community corrections and probation in particular, the return on crime reduction would be significantly better.

The ultimate popular wisdom on why we need prisons is that they contain the dangerous and make communities safer, at least for the term of the imprisonment. Hence, the longer we can make that term, the safer we feel. Except for the occasional good year, escape rates in NSW continue to be around 1.5 per 100 prisoners. But at over 70 a year that may not be such a comforting figure.

The data referred to in other parts of this chapter tends to suggest that, in terms of recidivism, deterrence, and even crime prevention, the results from community prevention options are no worse than the prison, often better, and always so much cheaper. In addition, it would appear that rehabilitation and restoration have better chances of success outside the prison than in a custodial setting.

Loss of correctional motivation outside prison walls

The deteriorating relative investment in community corrections in recent years speaks volumes about how often successful, non-custodial punishment programmes are out of political favour. In addition, the predominance of the prison as the popular punishment model has meant that under-resourced and apparently undervalued alternative sentencing options do not figure in political considerations of the efficacy of the criminal sanction.

Recent evaluations of the Drug Court and Juvenile Conferencing in NSW should give the community confidence in diversionary initiatives, and the international experience of both suggests a significant potential benefit in their expansion. However, the corrections discussion seems disproportionately located in custodial settings.

A consequence of this might be to expect research and development in the area of pre-release programmes. The research is there, as well as the empirical confirmation, that well planned and well-resourced pre- and post-release initiatives will ensure important and realistic correctional outcomes.

As will be mentioned, the challenge is to reinvest in non-custodial corrections, and to recognise the corrective capacity of community collaborations and partnerships.

This will require some declaration of political interest. To ensure this in the prevailing penal climate, it may be necessary to include the development of community corrections models prominently within an integrated progressive punishment plan.

Is correction possible in prison?

Victoria, for instance, is investing substantially in a best practice strategy to reduce re-offending, as Birgden explains:

In addition to risk management to address community protection and justice principles, enhanced well-being to address autonomy and therapeutic principles is required. The psychological theory of good lives proposes an enhancement model of rehabilitation. The legal theory of therapeutic jurisprudence proposes how the roles of legal actors may be therapeutic. Both theories are concerned with the enhancement of psychological well-being.

Birgden argues for a correctional system responsive to offenders. She suggests the possibility of a 'culture shift' to reaffirm rehabilitative as well as punitive goals for sentencing.

Where cognitive treatment programmes in prison seem to work against a measure of reconviction, they have been operated in a 'what works' context. Programmes which come within this reference include the Canadian-originated 'Reasoning and Rehabilitation' and 'Enhanced Thinking Skills'.

These programmes promote self-control (thinking before acting), inter-personal problem solving skills, social perspective taking, critical reasoning skills, cognitive style, and understanding the values which govern behaviour.

Not inconsistent with the Canadian studies, while reconviction rates for the treatment population were up to 14 per cent better than the control group, this only held for medium to low risk prisoners. For high risk, the differential fell to a low 5 per cent. In any case, this study provides a potential for a cost effectiveness evaluation of offender programmes.

As suggested earlier, recidivism rates alone as a performance measure of the effectiveness of offender programmes are too narrow an evaluation of rehabilitation practice in prison. More realistic is an integrated approach focusing on the climate of programme delivery, cost effectiveness, the programme's integrity and the treatment outcomes. In this respect, life quality issues are a vital measure of the relevance of correctional programmes in prison.

If rehabilitation is to be preferred as a motivation for punishment, then its location should be in community corrections and restorative environments, if only on the basis of cost effectiveness considerations. In saying this, however, in the medium term prison will be the environment for certain offenders, and there is no reason to deprive them of rehabilitation programmes, provided performance measures and resource justifications shift from unrealistic to simple, practical, obvious and predictable concerns.

There is significant evidence that prison life and society tends to exacerbate the behavioural and social determinants of crime. Violent, inhuman, unsafe, confrontational, and exploitative prison settings will distort appropriate social and moral messages consistent with crime prevention.

A reluctance to deal with illiteracy, drug abuse, anger, indolence, and marginalisation will leave offender populations ill prepared for social reintegration. An under-resourcing of pre-release programmes will compound the problem.

These issues can be confronted in a more basic, universal, best practice model for prison life, and as such will achieve the small but consistent improvements in prisoner life quality that produces measurable performance indicators.

The Home Office, as the administrator of English prisons, is now required to meet modest targets in the improvement of prison life and the reduction of re-offending following release. This has necessitated the development of a new context for corrections, one directed to the improvement in the quality of prison life and an investment in 'what works' with offenders.

A recent study to evaluate the quality of life in five English prisons from the perspective of staff and offenders found that staff and prisoners agree on 'what matters' in assessing prison quality, suggesting that there is a broad consensus about values; that these include respect, fairness, decency and order; that prison life quality resembles the expectation for civil society; and that safety is a critical concern. One prisoner respondent reflected on his aspirations for prison treatment:

To me, being treated with humanity means being provided adequate, reasonably comfortable and clean accommodation and being acknowledged as a person with individual needs, desires, concerns, strengths and weaknesses.

Prison staff would find it hard to argue against this. However, it is the bigotry of public opinion about prisoners 'getting it too easy' which tends to endorse further social exclusion in prison.

Paradoxically, it is this that increases the likelihood of re-offending on release and the associated threat to community safety.

Along with this commitment to the quality of life in prison has been an appreciation that time and money needs to be invested on an inmate-by-inmate commitment to improved sentence planning, and better arrangements for post release supervision.

Progressive punishment plan: harmonising sanction and rehabilitation

If crime control and community safety are to continue as the motivations for punishment (recognising just deserts and deterrence principles), then lower re-offending targets as public service/government commitments seem reasonable for corrective services agencies. This means that, for rehabilitation programmes to play a realistic part in the achievement of these targets, there must be a two-pronged approach to corrective services:

(1) In an atmosphere of rationalised prison resources, correctional programmes should be integrated and offender-centred. In this respect, individualised sentence management strategies should be a priority. Life quality concerns will be an important programme focus and relevance indicator. The programmes must operate under straight-forward performance indicators, which rely neither on problematic risk measures nor artificial selection criteria such as the diagnosis of original offending.

(2) Non-custodial environments for correctional programmes are to be preferred and promoted, if only on the basis of cost effectiveness. Such programmes must rely on investment in pre-release and post release transition and institutional support so that re-offending targets will be secured.

This dual approach will work if it focuses on 'what works', rather than what 'might' work. It must also grow from a foundational environment of trust and mutual self--respect rather than in an atmosphere of discriminative access to behaviour management, and thereby early release, based on suspect measures of re-offending risk.

The development of community collaborations and partnerships in the development and delivery of custodial and non-custodial correctional programmes should be encouraged as the natural progression from custodial corrective climates designed to foster cultural change within and without the prison. Particularly in the areas of employment, work ethic generation and purposeful activity, locating corrective initiatives within community settings increases the potency of employment as a factor against re-offending.

Ultimately, a progressive punishment plan, which has as its central plank corrections and restoration, will need to argue its relevance in a different way to the prison. Imprisonment is accepted as a preferred sanction despite its failings because of an epidemic of community confidence in its capacity to protect. This approach can and should be challenged by an approach to punishment planning which values realistic evaluation.

For corrections programmes inside the gaol in particular, consideration must be advanced for regimes, conditions and costs in the creation of practical prison performance indicators, such as: average hours engaged in purposeful activity; time unlocked; programme completions; total education study hours; nature of prison employment; releases on temporary (pre-release) license; accommodation in cells beyond their capacity design; prisoners testing positive for drugs; escapes; assaults and self harm; cost per uncrowded place.

A renewed commitment to rehabilitation within a smart and resource effective criminal justice model will build bridges between custodial and community corrections. Issues of cost and resource accountability in public spending are eventually catching up on the lavish investment in the failing prison of previous decades. Rights based and equitable correctional opportunities are the essential precursors for a return to rehabilitation that avoids the excesses of the sixties, the denial of the seventies, the rejection of the eighties, and the disappointment of the nineties.

By Professor Mark Findlay 20 July 05

Crime and Punishment

Prisons, by their nature and the communities they house, suffer more acutely from the social exclusion that characterises the underprivileged parts of Australian society. Without the exacerbation of a custodial experience, these characteristics alone militate against the successful reintegration of prisoners back into the community.

Prisons as progressive punishment?

Prisons, by their nature and the communities they house, suffer more acutely from the factors of social exclusion that characterise the underprivileged sectors of Australian society.

Related:

Prisoner total rises 15% in six years
England and Wales are continuing to jail offenders at a higher rate than any other major country in western Europe, it emerged today. New research indicates that the government's use of prison as its main tool of penal policy has increased by 15% since 1999.

Adler punished for being in prison
NSW: Sydney businessman Rodney Adler has been transferred to a higher-security prison as punishment for allegedly attempting to conduct business activities from jail even though people are sent to prison for punishment not to be punished?

Where the Norm is Not the Norm: HARM-U
In the absence of public policy, this paper is an attempt to shine a light through the rhetoric and test for coherency in the policy and function of NSW’s only supermax prison, the High Risk Management Unit. Its present use will be compared with the ‘vision’ flogged by the Premier and the Department of Corrective Services (the Department) at its inception in 2001.

Department of Corrective Services fails to rehabilitate offenders
NSW: Unpopular people will be forced to wear tracking devices at a cost of $5,000 dollars per unit because the NSW Department of Corrective Services failed to rehabilitate those offenders at a cost of $65,000 a year while they were held in custody for many years.

Parole Board Membership
NSW: The Law Society is aware that two former long standing police officers Mr Robert Inkster, an Mr Peter Walsh, were appointed to the Parole Board as Community Members for a period of three years from 17 January 2005 until 16 January 2008.

Corrected or Corrupted
A psychiatrist from the prison Mental Health Team attached to Queensland Health made the comment that 25 per cent of inmates suffer from a diagnosed mental illness.

ICOPA XI International Conference on Penal Abolition
We are excited to announce that ICOPA X1, the eleventh International Conference on Penal Abolition will happen in Tasmania, Australia from February 9 - 11,2006. Please pass this onto all networks.

Ex-Prisoner Locked Out of Prison
The NSW Department of Corrective Services (DCS) has revealed a policy which bans ex-prisoners from entering prisons.

Justice Action: Access to our community
NSW: Justice Action went to the NSW Supreme Court before the last Federal election on the constitutional right for prisoners to receive information for their vote. The government avoided the hearing by bringing prisoners' mobile polling booths forward. We pursued it after the election. This is the report.

MORE PRISONERS LOCKDOWNS HAVE OFFICERS ON EDGE
NSW POLICE Commissioner Ken Moroney has issued an ultimatum as well, to the lawless youths holding Sydney's streets to ransom?: Learn some respect or face jail?

Tough line on crime fills jails
The tough law-and-order policies of governments around the nation are behind an explosion in the prison population by almost 80 per cent in the past two decades.

FAMILIES OF PRISONERS FORUM
14,500 children in NSW go to bed each night with a parent in prison!

LEGAL VISITS AT PARKLEA PRISON
I am a prisoner in NSW and I am currently held in Parklea Prison. I am concerned about what is going on in NSW prisons and this is my story.

Parklea Prison: No calls for six days
The last calls that were made out of Parklea Correctional Complex by my partner, an inmate in remand at Parklea, was on Wednesday 2 February. The phone lines for the inmates have been out of service to this date.

Prison visits in crisis in NSW
The reason I am writing today is to address a difficult situation that my husband and my family are going through. My husband is currently serving a sentence at Lithgow Correctional Centre in NSW.

Prison boom will prove a social bust
Hardened criminals are not filling NSW's prisons - the mentally ill and socially disadvantaged are, writes Eileen Baldry.

The prison system requires assiduous oversight
As NSW Attorney General Bob Debus noted in 1996: "The kinds of complaints which occur in the system may seem trivial to outsiders but in the superheated world of the prison, such issues can produce explosive results."

Crime and Punishment
Mark Findlay argues that the present psychological approach to prison programs is increasing the likelihood of re-offending and the threat to community safety.

Justice Denied In NSW Corrective Services
There used to be a (VJ) or Visiting Justice who would go into the prison and judge any claim or accusation that was made by any prisoner or prison guard. If it were found that a prisoner had offended then punishment was metered out.

Prison guards test positive for drugs
NSW prison visitors banned from using the toilet The visit is only for about one hour and any thing less than that is an insult. If it's proved that a visitor has broken the rules the punishment should apply to them. But collective punishment on all visitors should not be made general when others haven't broken the rules especially if it restricts all visitors from normal human needs like using a toilet.

NSW prison visitors banned from using the toilet
The New South Wales Government has introduced several initiatives to stop contraband getting into prisons they said last Friday. But under the guise of "stricter rules" the department had also introduced banning all visitors including children from using the toilet unless they terminate their visit at any NSW prison after using the toilet.

Watchdogs slaughtered in NSW
On Tuesday the Carr Government reduced transparency and accountability yet again and New South Wales is in danger of becoming entrenched with cronyism and intimidations with the Carr Labor Government that continues to slaughter the watchdogs.

Throw away the key

The one profession to get results on recidivism has been sacrificed to Labour's desire to lock up criminals in private prisons

UK: Patrick Carter is one of Downing Street's thinkers. He was asked to work out a way of streamlining the prison system at a time when the population has reached a record 76,000 and is estimated to hit 93,000 by the end of the decade.

But ever since Downing Street published the Carter review on the new National Offender Management Service (Noms) last winter, the criminal justice community has searched in vain for the evidence base and the business case.

Carter proposed the merger of two professional cultures: prison, which warehouses criminals and probation, which works on how and why offenders offend. To cut custodial sentences he proposed a sentencing regime designed to keep less serious offenders in the community - a scheme expected to fail under pressure from the tabloids and, therefore, Downing Street itself.

Noms is based on an ethic of efficiency and competition, unburdened by professional judgment and public service. But what evidence supports Noms? Judy McKnight is the general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, a union whose members, unusually, address the life and times of their clients - criminals - as part of their professional politics, and she has been told that we are not allowed to know.

She asked the Open Government Unit to give the business case for this new monster agency. That was in January. It took until May and the Freedom of Information Act to get a reply. The Open Government Unit said, yes, Noms is controversial and, yes, data is available; but, no, she can't have it. Disclosure would "impinge on the space needed by the government to debate all relevant issues"; it would "lead to speculation on the way Noms is being established", and this could "lead to a decline in support for the policy".

That fear is no doubt cemented by scepticism in the Home Office which, according to leaks, is afraid that the £4bn merger of the two services "faces a high risk of failure". It gets worse. According to the Open Government Unit, disclosure could "jeopardise" Noms by undermining the confidence not only of staff but of the judiciary. "Such prejudice" would be "detrimental to the public interest." "Business cases" may be revised and rejected but must not be revealed, says the unit. Why? Because public debate would "compromise" the procurement programme.

Ah, so it might deter the private sector. Carter proposed simultaneous integration and fragmentation of prison and probation. Scotland had a public debate and preferred a collegial, multi-disciplinary model. But England got a three-week consultation - over Christmas - and a merger. Management of the mega corrections agency would be informed by technical rather than professional values, and would be open to "contestability" - Carter code for privatisation. This will bury the small but sometimes beautiful probation service, probably the most feminised of the criminal-justice professions, and one of the most successful, into the large and largely unsuccessful prison system.

Noms's mission is to reduce re-offending, but custody yields a 60% recidivism rate. And putting more and more people in prison actually puts public safety at risk, says Professor Michael Jacobson, New York's former chief probation officer. He has been in Britain this month arguing that, contrary to myth, the city's crime was cut in the 1990s not by prison but by community punishment and probation. So, why privatise probation, rather than focus on reforming the big but unsuccessful prison service? We are left to guess - and my guess is that the government's view of what works with offenders has become that nothing works, that criminals are part of a larger residuum with criminal tendencies, and if we can't make them earn a legal living wage, and we can't kill them, all we can do is control them. So, criminal justice replaces social justice.

What sponsors crime, the kind of crime that drives communities crazy, is a dangerous kind of knowledge because it tells us so much about what people do with power and powerlessness, what can change and what it costs to create change; and not least what it is about men's culture - most offenders being men - that connects them to cultures of crime. The government bankrolled a research programme on crime and punishment, but that unpublished review has not been allowed to enlighten public debate about the cultures and causes of crime, and the possibilities and limits of change. Not-knowingness encourages the prevailing prejudice that nothing works and therefore public safety can only be gained by curfew, control and containment: if we can't cut their hands off, or their willies, or their heads, then lock 'em up and throw away the key.

This is the orientation that lurks behind the preference for a managerial and technical - rather than professional and public-service - response to crime and punishment. This approach empties the debate of the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness, suggests Richard Garside, the director of the Crime and Society Foundation. Tagging can be done by anyone, Tesco or Group 4. Super-prisons, by the efficiency logic, are better value for money than smaller prisons, and Group 4 can do prison just as well as Her Majesty. Containment is less challenging than addressing offenders' circumstances, the cultures and causes of crime.

The profession associated with change rather than containment is, of course, probation. But it has been disdained as public-service and "soft", even though it has delivered the most creative and challenging work with offenders to reduce recidivism. Pessimism begets prison and privatisation, and that is why the business case - if it exists - must stay secret. But there is hope; the Home Office, after all, has a new, nice team in Charles Clarke, Fiona McTaggart and Baroness Scotland, all thinking people. It is to be hoped that they're not entirely persuaded by the pessimists.

By Beatrix Campbell posted 8 July 05

Related:

Judges' misdeeds will remain secret
UK: Judges who are disciplined for bad behaviour will not have the findings against them made public under a complaints regime to be launched next year.

Prisoner total rises 15% in six years
England and Wales are continuing to jail offenders at a higher rate than any other major country in western Europe, it emerged today. New research indicates that the government's use of prison as its main tool of penal policy has increased by 15% since 1999.

CPS drops prosecution over death in custody
UK: The family of Roger Sylvester, who died after being restrained by police officers, yesterday expressed their disappointment at a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute any of the officers involved.

Prisoner's cell death
UK: A prisoner was found hanged in his cell last week, the Home Office said, fuelling criticism over the soaring number of suicides in custody.

Plans for five new 'superprisons'
Recent figures show a total of 75,550 prisoners were held in 139 jails in England and Wales, nudging up the previous record of April 2004 by just six inmates.

Prison has lost its way - report
UK: Bristol prison is suffering wide-ranging problems because of inconsistent management, the Chief Inspector of Prisons has said.

Row over acupuncture for prisoners
UK: The Home Office has responded to criticism over prison inmates who are being offered acupuncture on the NHS in order to relieve stress.

Number of prisoners sent back to jail trebles
UK: The number of prisoners being sent back to jail after release has nearly trebled in the past five years, according to a report published today.

Top judge says crowded prisons cannot break cycle of crime
UK: Reoffending rates after a prison sentence are at an "unacceptably high level" and the failure of the criminal justice system to stop prisoners reoffending should shock the public, England's top judge, [Ruling Class] Lord Woolf, said last week.

All the World's a Prison: History
No doubt many of my readers, even those who are well-educated or widely read, think that the prison -- the place where dark deeds are darkly answered[2] -- is an ancient institution, a barbaric hold-over from barbaric times. In fact, the prison is of relatively recent origin, and this tells us a great deal about the pretentions and realities of modern times, and the wisdom and high degree of development of the ancients.

Decade after inspector left in disgust, report tells of filth
UK: Dirty, mice-infested cells, high levels of self-harm, and widespread bullying over drugs and medications were just some of the damning findings of a report into conditions at Holloway, Britain's largest women's prison.

Most women 'should not be jailed'
Women make up 6% of the prison population in England and Wales. Imprisonment of women should be "virtually abolished", a prison reform group has said.

Youth 'murdered for officers' pleasure'
UK: An Asian teenager was murdered by a white racist after they were placed in the same cell as part of a game to fulfil the "perverted pleasure" of prison officers, a public inquiry heard on Friday.

Deaths in isolation as prison segregation increases
The use of segregation [solitary confinement] of prisoners as punishment has been increasing recently in Australia, the US, and the UK. Segregation can be used for protection or punishment, but in both cases it results in extreme psychological stress. An indication that segregation is being over-used is the appearance of deaths in custody from suicide of those placed in segregation.

Inquest blames jail for overdose death
UK: An inquest jury returned a verdict itemising a catalogue of faults at Styal prison in Cheshire, concluding that the prison's "failure of duty of care" contributed to the death of Sarah Campbell, 18, who took an overdose of tablets on the first day of her three-year sentence.

Put in the way of self-harm in a place intended to protect others
UK: Sarah Campbell, 18, spent the last hours of her life in the segregation unit of Styal prison, Cheshire. "The seg", as those places are referred to, used to be known as "the block", short for punishment block. [ Seg is a bullshit word for Punishment, Solitary Confinement, Torture, Mental Illness, Self-Harm, Human Rights Abuse and that is State Terror.]

Britain 'sliding into police state'
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, is transforming Britain into a police state, one of the country's former leading anti-terrorist police chiefs [false flag police chiefs] said yesterday.

UK solitary confinement
UK: Segregation units are prisons within prisons - the places where the most unchecked brutality is meted out to prisoners. In recent years conditions in high security segregation units have deteriorated, and the use of long-term segregation as a control mechanism has increased.

Inquiry must root out prison racists
UK: It is difficult to imagine a more brutal murder than that of Zahid Mubarek. The 19-year-old was clubbed to death by his cellmate at Feltham Young Offender Institution in the early hours of 21 March 2000. He was due to be released just a few hours later.

Prison suicides soar as jails hire 'babysitters'
UK: Prison officers are being taken off suicide watch and replaced by unqualified 'babysitters' because the system is overwhelmed by an epidemic of self-harm.

Plan to sell off juvenile jails as job lot
UK: The government is to put out to tender all its dedicated juvenile jails that hold children under 18 in a departure in Whitehall's privatisation programme.

Failure to sack 'racist' prison staff condemned
UK: Two prison officers suspended for racism are still on full pay three years after a stash of Nazi memorabilia, neo-fascist literature and Ku Klux Klan-inspired 'nigger-hunting licences' was found in a police raid on their home.

Report slams 'unjust' jailing of women on remand
UK: Six out of 10 women sent to jail while they await trial are acquitted or given a non-custodial sentence, a report published today reveals. Introducing the report, Lady Kennedy QC calls for a complete review of the use of remand and bail for women saying it is "inhumane and unjust".

Concern as UK prison suicides hit record level
UK: More prisoners took their own lives in English jails in August than in any other month since records began, prison reformers said today.

End of years of despair as Holloway closes its doors
But now Holloway prison in north London - where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, was hanged in 1955 - has been earmarked for closure, along with several other women's prisons, which have been hit by a spate of suicides.

How detox and self-help brought suicide jail back from the brink
UK: Six suicides in 12 months made Styal jail notorious and the Prisons Ombudsman criticised the prison and its staff for serious failures. But things are changing.

Belmarsh detainees consider suicide, says freed man
UK: The first of the Muslim detainees released from Belmarsh high security prison after being held on suspicion of terrorism has told the Guardian his fellow prisoners are suffering such severe mental problems that they constantly consider suicide.

Suicides and unrest have soared, admits Home Office
UK:The already overcrowded prison population is set to go on rising and will top 80,000 within the next three years, a senior Home Office civil servant warned yesterday.

England tops the EU in imprisonment
England and Wales jail more offenders per capita than any other European, Union country, according to new figures.

Kenyan court frees Australian after trespass conviction

A Kenyan court has freed a young Australian and placed him on probation for 12 months, after he was found inside the president's official residence in Nairobi.

Jarrod Guy, 22, was found loitering inside State House, President Mwai Kibaki's official residence, on Wednesday morning.

Nairobi's Kilimani police commander Richard Ngatia says Guy, who was charged with trespass, pleaded guilty but was freed on condition that he should not misbehave during the next 12 months.

By Just Us 3 September 04

Helping Prisoners Find Their Way Home?

Program Pairs Ex-Convicts With Houses of Worship, [? Religious Bondage.]

Antonio Pinder used to be scared of returning home from prison, stricken by fear that he would fall back into the life that landed him behind bars. He hadn't had a steady job before he was sent away 13 years ago, and he worried that he never would. A year out of prison, he is still searching for work.

But perhaps more important than a job, he says, what he's found since his release from a federal prison in West Virginia is the resilience to carry him through the inevitable setbacks that bedevil many ex-offenders coming home.

For that, Pinder credits the efforts of the mentors who have been working with him and with dozens of other returning inmates, [prisoners], as part of a program that gives churches, mosques and other religious organizations an instrumental role in shepherding such men and women back into the community.

Launched in 2002, the Faith Community Partnership is run by the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, the federal office that serves as the District's probation and parole administrator.

Marked by a criminal record, Pinder is one of the many ex-offenders who find it difficult to land good work. For too many of them, that is the first step on a path right back to prison.

Pinder, 35, could well have been one of those who tripped up. So far, he has found only periodic work through a temp agency. He'd like to work for Metro as a bus driver. For now, though, what he has is hope. And that, he said, is thanks to the efforts of the new faith partnership. Now in its second full year, the program costs about $300,000 annually, most of which is used to pay for the administrative staff who coordinate the program.

[What about ex prisoners as mentors? Because the best mentors have been there. Giving $300,000 annually to mostly pay for administrative staff is just corporate welfare.]

From Pilgrim Baptist Church to the Founding Church of Scientology, 42 institutions have signed on to help mentor offenders. About 200 mentors are working with about 100 convicts like Pinder. "It just gives you that spiritual stability," he said. "You feel someone cares about you other than yourself."

[Just plain propaganda. Certainly he felt someone cared but why not pay the community and give ex-offenders a job instead of paying faith based corporate welfare.]

For Pinder, one of those people was Wanda L. Jackson, who works with a group called Reintegrating Alternatives Personal Program, or RAPP.

The organization is housed at the Faith Tabernacle Church of Prayer in Southeast Washington and draws many of its volunteers from the church.

They linked up even before Pinder was released from prison, where he was serving time for cocaine distribution. Those final days before his release were fraught with anxiety. "I didn't know what to expect. I was paranoid, paranoid of going back in the same situation because I couldn't get a job," he said. "I went into prison when I was 22 years old. I grew up in prison."

So as his release date neared, he started telephoning Jackson, one of three mentors he would eventually find through the partnership. "Every Sunday morning, I was calling," he said. And Jackson was already embracing him, if only over the phone. "I would drop everything and talk to him. I think it helped prepare him. . . . I felt his apprehension."

The mentoring program, spawned amid the Bush administration's enthusiasm for faith-based programs of all sorts, has drawn an increasing number of institutions into its fold, said Paul A. Quander Jr., director of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency. And as word of the program and the opportunities it presents has spread among inmates, [prisoners], interest from those who are soon to be returning has spread as well, coordinators in the program say.

[George Bush's faith base enthusiasm is drawn for electioneering and votes not based on any faith about good but all about evil. The idea is that Bush grants federal money to faith based welfare to mentor prisoners and in return he gets faithful votes.]

To be eligible to participate, a returning inmate, [prisoner], cannot be a convicted sex offender, cannot have a severe substance abuse problem and cannot have multiple convictions for violent crimes.

Many inmates, [prisoners], are challenging their status as violent offenders in an effort to be eligible for the program, said Abubakr Muhammad Karim, reentry director for the East of the River Clergy-Police-Community Partnership. "What's happening is the guys that are in prison are starting to recognize the success of the guys who were in the program," Karim said.

A new video link between Washington and the federal prison in North Carolina that houses more D.C. inmates, [prisoners], than any other prison has helped the offenders and future mentors begin forging bonds weeks or months before inmates are actually released.

One beneficiary was Joseph Johnson, 48, who was released from the prison on Jan. 22 after serving about 15 years behind bars, originally on drug distribution charges but more recently for violating his parole by using drugs. Like Pinder, Johnson has no regular job. He nearly landed a $17-an-hour carpenter's job on a construction project, but that fell through last week after only a couple of days. "When he said 'We can't use you,' I wasn't discouraged," he said.

But he was, at the very least, disappointed -- so much so that he didn't call his mentor, the Rev. Sharon Best of New Commandment Baptist Church in Northwest, who learned of his setback as he recounted it while speaking witha reporter. "I'm sorry, Ms. Best, I didn't call to tell you," he told her. "That's when you're supposed to call," she said.

"It didn't make me do anything bad," he replied in his own defense, alluding to the many days in his life when such a turn of events would have sent him looking for drugs. Instead, he went back to the list of prospective jobs and kept plugging away.

Within a couple of days, he had another job possibility lined up. "I got blessed," he said, "by keeping my composure." Helping inmates, [people], find that equilibrium amid the tumult in their lives is a part of what the mentoring is supposed to do. Along with the officers who are paid to keep track of the parolees, the mentors, all of them volunteers, are another set of ears and eyes.

Quander, a former prosecutor, knows that the program will be judged not on individual stories but by broader measures. "I can't rely merely on anecdotal tales of success," he said. "I have to rely on hard numbers."

By those hard numbers, the success of the program so far would appear to be modest. The re-arrest rate for D.C. ex-offenders has been falling generally, down to 17 percent in 2003 from 27 percent in 1999. About 15 percent of participants in the faith-based program are being re-arrested -- only a couple of percentage points below the overall rate, and several points above where Quander would like to see it. "If we can get into the single digits, I'll be very happy," he said.

When he took over the offender supervision office, Quander inherited a fledgling faith-based program. It didn't take him long, he said, to conclude that the program could form an integral part of the agency's efforts, particularly at a time when the city would be facing large influxes of people coming home from prison.

"When I looked at the program and what it was offering, and how we could take that to the next level and how we could make a difference, I thought it was not only worth keeping but expanding," Quander said.

The Rev. Herbert C. Bruce, of Pilgrim Baptist Church in Northeast Washington, said that although people were enthusiastic early on about helping, they were also unsure how it would all turn out.

"I think if you have a church saying they didn't go into this with trepidation, they're lying," Bruce said. "We didn't know what to expect."

What they have come to expect are successes like Shirley Hall, also jobless but nonetheless hopeful and enthusiastic about how God has come into her life with the help of her mentors at Upper Room Baptist Church in Northeast.

First sent to prison in 1986 on a heroin distribution charge, Hall served four years of a four-to-12-year sentence. But she couldn't steer clear of trouble once free, and twice landed back in prison.

Now back out -- for good, she hopes -- Hall, 40, is looking for a job. She actually had what she thought would be a good one. She was delivering packages for a courier service and the pay -- $600 a week -- seemed good, until she discovered that half of that would be deducted for use of the van.

Already she was enduring an arduous commute that forced her to leave around 4:30 a.m. and ride a bus from Naylor Road SE to Friendship Heights. There she would board a Metro train to Rockville. And in Rockville, she would catch a taxi for $6.50. It just didn't make sense. So she quit.

But she is confident. It took her a while to find her mentors, too. After three tries, she finally found people who are keeping her strong, among them Deborah Ford and the Rev. Catherine Bego of Upper Room Baptist.

"I don't worry about it," Hall said. "God got me. I'm going to get a job."

By Henri E. Cauvin posted 20 February 04

[Jib Jab]

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