The Candid Blogger: prison reform

Showing posts with label prison reform. Show all posts

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Standing Room Only at Job Fair for Felons

It's time we started retraining those who are incarcerated and stop making it a financial bonanza for private contractors to house prisoners.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Kirchner is about to Dance with Wolves

I first met Don Kirchner in Sedona, AZ in 1995. No, not the music promoter, the ex-combat helicopter pilot in Vietnam whose involvement with the Mob and a huge drug smuggling operation led to his spearheading a DC-6 landing in the Florida Everglades carrying a load of high grade pot. His eventual arrest, being on the run for five years, and his eventual capture and imprisonment make a great story and his book is outstanding. I recommend it.

After serving 2 1/2 years of a potential 25 year sentence, and with the backing of Senator Goldwater and eventually John McCain, he was released and established the Society for Return to Honor.

With over 2,600,000 men, women and adolescents in jails, prisons and detention centers in the United States, and an astonishing 70-80% of all inmates released from incarceration returning to jail or prison within the first year after their release, it is clear that communities and individuals are not taking the extra meaningful steps toward understanding the true nature of criminal behavior, and addressing its causes rather than reacting to its effects.

Most determined and highly-motivated former offenders fight a nearly impossible battle for acceptance and respectability in returning to their communities. The simplest things most people take for granted are often formidable obstacles for the newly-released prisoner; a place to sleep, food to eat, clothes to wear, a job, transportation, and even deposits required for a place to live. Often lacking the self-confidence, required social skills and personal resources, released prisoners face nearly impossible odds in their attempts at re-entry into society.

Don has struggled trying to assist ex-offenders for fifteen years and now his day may have come. Hollywood took much longer than the Feds to catch up with Don in the person of Academy Award winner, Michael Blake, who is best known for his screenplay and novel, "Dances with Wolves". Blake has completed the first draft for the screenplay for Don's outstanding story, "A Matter of Time". He will also direct. This should make a blockbuster of a movie. I can't wait.

Congrats, old friend.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

America: a Prison Nation

Some people are concerned about a network of internment camps and private prisons that appears to being built at great expense around the nation. What's more shocking is that right now the US has more people behind bars than any country on earth including Russia and China. It's as American as apple pie.

In fact, one of of every four human beings on earth who is imprisoned is in a US facility. Look it up. That's a horror show taking place right now and it barely merits comment.

Amazingly, a vast network of legalized slave labor based on imprisoning blacks for petty and made up crimes existed in broad daylight in the South up until 1945, the reality of which is only just now coming to light.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Incarceration: Changing Our Thinking

Incarceration: Changing Our Thinking

Incarceration is a term with which most Americans are well familiar by now. Enough movies, books and television and news programs have us all well informed by now about all the dark, evil and brutal aspects of being locked up. True, it’s scary and sinister stuff. It’s the darker side of the human experience, and for most people it is evil and even brutal. But it’s our stuff, meaning that collectively it belongs to us. We, as a society, created it and we sustain it by what we believe about it and how we allow others to run it, just like everything else in the political and economic worlds.

In order to do anything about it that makes any difference, we need to recognize it for what it is, and how it functions with our collective acquiescence and indifference…and our ignoring what goes on inside the walls and fences. That includes what goes on in the minds of the people who manage and administer jails and prisons, many (if not most) of whom do so with a sense of vengeance and coldness that only enflames the problems and reinforces behavior patterns on the part of “criminals” that typically make them worse.

I am not a cynic, nor do I have anything against “the system,” such as it is. In fact, I work with that system, in that I counsel and teach both inmates and correctional officers how to recognize behavior patterns that are destructive and counterproductive, and to change those behavior patterns for the better. It’s amazing how small a change in thinking toward others will positively affect their behavior no matter how “brutal” or vengeful they might be.

How do I know this? I was one of them. I was a federal prisoner for 2 1/2 years, which very nearly became 25 years, with no chance of parole. I survived the experience in the face of brutish resistance and hostility toward me because I looked like everything most inmates and criminals have learned to dislike and distrust. But as I made consistent efforts to help them with simple things like reading and writing, their behavior changed for the better, not only toward me but toward everyone else––including correctional officers. What seemed destined to be a 25-year sentence became far less, primarily because of the good that was evidenced as a result of my work inside. Nearly everyone's attitudes toward one another began to change, and with that came near-miraculous developments that enabled me to not only still be alive, but thriving outside the walls as a useful, contributing member of society.

In order to change anything that has such a huge collective emotional charge such as the criminal justice system, we have to get outside of our own personal issues and pre-conceived notions about crime and criminals, and be willing to change our thinking…if only a little bit at a time. Just being willing to understand is a major step forward. One needn’t agree with or condone criminal or negative behavior, but only be willing to see behind the masks and the negative images we see in the movies and on television. If enough of us do that (and thank God that there is a groundswell of people on both sides now doing exactly that), we can change the way “incarceration” works, and make it work far more effectively.

Don Kirchner
June 9, 2009
www.ReturnToHonor.org

Friday, March 27, 2009

A Response to Obama on Legalizing Marijuana

Webb Will Fight to End Insane Drug Policy

Mr. Obama's joking response to a serious question posed by thousands of his supporters was discomforting enough for us to post yesterday's remarks which we entitled, THE PRESIDENT MADE A BIG MISTAKE. His comments and attitude has spurred other reactions as well. Here is one:

"Despite the president's flippant comments today, the grievous harms of marijuana prohibition are no laughing matter," said Jack Cole, a former undercover narcotics officer and founding member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, in a statement to RAW STORY. "Certainly, the 800,000 people arrested last year on marijuana charges find nothing funny about it, nor do the millions of Americans struggling in this sluggish economy. It would be an enormous economic stimulus if we stopped wasting so much money arresting and locking people up for nonviolent drug offenses and instead brought in new tax revenue from legal sales, just as we did when ended alcohol prohibition 75 years ago during the Great Depression."

Better yet, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia was quietly preparing to introduce major legislation which has the potential to dramatically alter US drug laws. Calling the US criminal justice system "a national disgrace," two US senators called for a top-to-bottom review with an eye on reforms aimed at reducing America's vast prison population.

Senator Webb, backed by Republican Senator Arlen Specter, introduced legislation to create a blue-ribbon panel that would conduct an 18-month assessment and offer concrete recommendations for reform. Sen. Webb's legislation enjoys not just bipartisan support, but "quiet encouragement from President Barack Obama," reported The Virginian-Pilot.

"America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace," Webb said, noting that the United States has five percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the world's prisoners.

According to a document released by Sen. Webb's office, "Its task will be to propose concrete, wide-ranging reforms to responsibly reduce the overall incarceration rate; improve federal and local responses to international and domestic gang violence; restructure our approach to drug policy; improve the treatment of mental illness; improve prison administration, and establish a system for reintegrating ex-offenders."

The Virginia lawmaker noted soaring numbers of drug offenders in prison, and charged that four times more mentally ill people are incarcerated than are in mental health hospitals. "We are doing something drastically wrong," said Webb, whose plan also aims to improve the US response to armed gangs, especially drug-related groups, as it seeks to bring the prison population down from about 2.4 million people.

"The high-level commission created by the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009 legislation will be comprised of experts in fields including criminal justice, law enforcement, public heath, national security, prison administration, social services, prisoner reentry, and victims' rights," read a statement from Webb's office. "It will be led by a chairperson to be appointed by the President. The Majority and Minority Leaders in the House and Senate, and the Democratic and Republican Governors Associations will appoint the remaining members of the commission."

About five million people are on probation or parole.

"We are not protecting our citizens from the increasing danger of criminals who perpetrate violence and intimidation as a way of life, and we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail," said Webb.

source: RAW STORY

We agree with you, Senator Webb, and encourage everyone to forward our article supporting the legalization of marijuana to the White House.

Here is the link: THE PRESIDENT MAKES A BIG MISTAKE.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Jailing and Drugging Kids for Profit

Jailing and Drugging kids for profit

Two judges in Pennsylvania US took over $2.6 million in bribes from a privately owned prison company to put THOUSANDS of kids in jail for extended sentences for NOTHING! This took place in broad daylight and scores of people in the justice system in Pennsylvania watched, stood by and did nothing.

The judges are now headed to jail, but the owners of the company who paid the bribes apparently have not been charged.

25% of all the people in jail in the entire world are in jail in the US.

That's today. Meanwhile, FEMA camps sit empty and waiting all over the country. The day someone figures out a profitable way to fill them, they will be filled and don't bet they are not working on it.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

America's Family Prison

T. Don Hutto - What About Human Rights?

Did you know that the federal government has not only set up but is also currently operating a prison that holds entire families - including infants, children and nursing and pregnant women?

As part of the Bush administration policy to end what they termed the "catch and release'" of undocumented immigrants, the U.S. government Department of Homeland Security opened the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in May 2006 as a prototype family detention facility. The facility is a former medium-security prison in central Texas operated by CCA, the largest private prison operator in the country. The facility houses immigrant children and their parents from all over the world who are awaiting asylum hearings or deportation proceedings. Located 30 miles north of Austin, it is the first family detention center in the country to be based on the penal model, though plans were quickly made to build more.

It's located in Taylor, Texas and it's operated by Corrections Corporation of America, a privately owned corporation. What is T Don Hutto? The T Don Hutto facility holds men, women (some pregnant), children, and infants, none of whom have a criminal past. Administered by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the country's largest for-profit corrections company, Hutto lacks proper licensing and medical facilities, and has been proven to traumatize families.

This short film by Matt Gossage and Lily Keber is one of the only public reports on this prison. Otherwise this subject has been entirely censored by the US news media.

For more information about this deplorable prison:

Click here: T. DON HUTTO

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

The Government's Unjust War on Marijuana

IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE.
Legalize Hemp and decriminalize Marijuana. Let's have some common sense.

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