Yeah, That'll Work

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Ah, Ted Rall is at it again!  This time his target is the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.  That's a pretty broad target -- the LASD has had a lot of problems the past few years, including an investigation by the feds involving prisoner abuse and taking bribes to smuggle in drugs and cell phones -- but Ted has narrowed things down to the latest idea by the Department.

The county jail system is dreadfully over-crowded, primarily because the state prison system was ordered by a federal judge to reduce the prison population because of over-crowding.  So the state system just passed on a whole lot of prisoners to the various county jails, which is what state government does whenever possible.  The Sheriff's Department is looking to find ways to reduce the number of prisoners in the County Jail  by way of early-release. 

In the past, early release was given to those who had served most of their sentence and had behaved themselves (and, apparently, hadn't squealed to the feds about conditions).  Someone has now decided that there might be a better way to determine who should be released early, a more scientific way.  Dating-sites on line have an algorithm to match people of for dates, and on-line retailers have an algorithm to decide, based on past purchases, what the customers should buy next.  Why not use the computer to decide which prisoner should be released early?

But math can also be used to guess which among yesterday’s bad guys are least likely to reoffend. Never mind what they did in the past. What will they do from now on? California prison officials, under constant pressure to reduce overcrowding, want to limit early releases to the inmates most likely to walk the straight and narrow. ...

Washington state uses a similar system, which has a 70% accuracy rate. “A follow-up study…found that about 47% of inmates in the highest-risk group returned to prison within three years, while 10% of those labeled low-risk did.”

No one knows which ex-cons will reoffend — sometimes not even the recidivist himself or herself. No matter how we decide which prisoners walk free before their end of their sentences, whether it’s a judgment call rendered by corrections officials generated by algorithms, it comes down to human beings guessing what other human beings do. Behind every high-tech solution, after all, are programmers and analysts who are all too human. Even if that 70% accuracy rate improves, some prisoners who have been rehabilitated and ought to have been released will languish behind bars while others, dangerous despite best guesses, will go out to kill, maim and rob. [Emphasis added]

I'm as skeptical as Ted Rall is, and I agree with his conclusion:

If the Sheriff’s Department moves forward with predictive algorithmic analysis, they’ll be exchanging one set of problems for another.

Technology is morally neutral. It’s what we do with it that makes a difference.   [Emphasis added]

Before the County of Los Angeles goes and spends millions of our dollars on this new computer system and on training those members of the department who will use it, I'd suggest they read Ted Rall's column in its entirety. 

California's Shame

(Editorial cartoon by Steve Sack and published 4/26/13 in the Minneapolis Star Tribune and featured at Cagle.com.)

No, this post isn't about hunger strikers at Gitmo.  It's about hunger strikers in California.  More than 30,000 inmates are protesting conditions in the state's prisons.  Specifically, they are protesting the policy of  isolating certain prisoners in small cells without windows or any human contact. This "solitary confinement" is done for various reasons, none of which appear to be too valid.

Shane Bauer, who wrote this opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, investigated the situation.  He has some good credentials for doing so.  He was held for 26 months (four of them in solitary confinement) in an Iranian prison after being arrested while hiking near the Iranian border with Iraq.

If the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was as serious about reforming its use of indefinite solitary confinement as it says it is, nearly 30,000 inmates wouldn't have started on a hunger strike last week, with many thousands still refusing meals. ...

These units are bleak. In Pelican Bay State Prison's SHU, which I have visited, most inmates live alone in a 7-by-11-foot cell without windows. They are allowed to exercise, alone, for an hour a day in a 16-by-25-foot cell with a plexiglass roof. They cannot make or receive phone calls or have contact visits with family or friends. They have no access to drug treatment programs and cannot attend religious services. The average inmate remains in isolation for 7 1/2 years.

Some SHU inmates have committed heinous acts in prison, but a prisoner doesn't have to be violent to get put in the hole indefinitely. Until recently, all it took was evidence that the inmate was associated with one of a number of gangs, and the evidence had to satisfy only prison authorities; it was never reviewed by an external body or court.

The parameters for what constitutes gang activity can be arbitrary. In the thousands of pages of prisoners' case files I have reviewed, "evidence" of gang affiliation has included possession of prisoner-rights literature or books like Sun Tzu's "Art of War" or Machiavelli's "The Prince." It has included journal writings on African American history. Even use of the words tio and hermano — Spanish for "uncle" and "brother" — have been cited as evidence of gang affiliation.

A year ago when I checked the numbers, the majority of those serving indefinite SHU terms were not even considered to be gang members but rather "associates," which required only that they had been involved, at least periodically, with other gang members or associates. ...

Prison officials say that, since the last hunger strike, they have moved toward a "behavior-based" approach to SHU incarceration. While previously association with a gang was enough to earn an indefinite SHU term, now an associate must commit one or two (depending on the ranking of the gang) serious rule violations to land there.

But a close look at the new policy reveals that the department has changed the definition of "serious" rule violations. In the past, these violations would have been the kinds of things you'd expect: selling drugs, attacking another inmate, attempting to escape. Under the new policy, a serious rule violation can be the possession of self-made drawings, the wrong books or anything that "depicts affiliation" with a security threat group — in other words, the kind of stuff that has always been used to lock people in the SHU.   [Emphasis added]

It's bad enough that several years ago a federal court held that California's prisons were seriously over-crowded and ordered the release of 20,000 prisoners or the building of new prisons to house the incarcerated in a safe and humane way and to provide them with adequate medical treatment.  California responded by shipping some prisoners to out of state facilities.  Gov. Jerry Brown has resisted doing much more because the state cannot afford new structures or the addition of hundreds of parole officers to handle all of the releases.

Now we learn that there is enough room in our prisons to put prisoners in single units away from everyone else for years.

For shame, California.

For shame.

WTF?

I've been hit with some kind of fell winter bug. My head hurts, my chest hurts, I have a dry cough so my ribs hurt, plus I'm running a low grade fever. I am, therefore, justifiably cranky, which makes it a bad time for me to read a Los Angeles Times editorial. I am now absolutely enraged, not by the editorial stance (the center-left editorial board got it so right than I am staggered and would be pleased with them if I felt better), but by the information contained in that editorial.

When Congress enacted the Prison Rape Elimination Act, it did so in the hope of curbing sexual assaults in facilities across the country. But today, with new rules to protect prisoners being finalized, the Department of Homeland Security is demanding that immigrants held in detention centers be exempted. ...

...the Department of Homeland Security is now squabbling over whether it or the Department of Justice has the authority to write rules that protect immigrants.

Isn't it obvious that protecting detainees is more important than who is the boss of whom? Detained immigrants are just as vulnerable to assault as any other prisoners, yet they're especially reluctant to report it. Unlike criminal defendants, detainees have no right to a court-appointed lawyer; that means they're often left with no advocate they can turn to. They are held in remote facilities, often far from legal clinics and family. And language creates an additional barrier to reporting abuse. [Emphasis added]

Homeland Security and Justice are in a freaking turf war over this issue? And their boss, the President of the United States is letting this happen? Is there no one in charge over there? Are there no adults present at that end of town?

Outfuckingrageous.

Here's the editorial's conclusion:

Rape is a crime. To apply the new regulations to some and not others would create a two-tier system of justice. That's not acceptable. Immigrants who are detained while they fight deportation (and who, by the way, have not generally been charged with, much less convicted of, a crime) deserve the same protections provided to criminals sentenced to maximum-security prisons.

Exactly.

Now, somebody needs to take Janet Napolitano and Eric Holder to the woodshed and read them the editorial, after which they should apply a mackerel to both of their heads and shoulders with great force.

Morons.

Say, What?

I had to stop and clean my spectacles this morning because I couldn't believe what I was reading: conservatives making sense on justice reform.

Reduced sentences for drug crimes. More job training and rehabilitation programs for nonviolent offenders. Expanded alternatives to doing hard time.

In the not-too-distant past, conservatives might have derided those concepts as mushy-headed liberalism — the essence of "soft on crime."

Nowadays, these same ideas are central to a strategy being packaged as "conservative criminal justice reform," and have rolled out in right-leaning states around the country in an effort to rein in budget-busting corrections costs. [Emphasis added]

Yes, that's exactly what I read the first time with smudged and streaked glasses. Now, the conservatives haven't gone all soft on crime, or suddenly had a change of heart when it comes to the inequities built into our justice system. They've finally just realized how incredibly expensive simply locking people away can be.

... with most states suffering from nightmare budget crises, many conservatives have acknowledged that hard-line strategies, while partially contributing to a drop in crime, have also added to fiscal havoc.

Corrections is now the second-fastest growing spending category for states, behind Medicaid, costing $50 billion annually and accounting for 1 of every 14 discretionary dollars, according to the Pew Center on the States.

While I would prefer a more humane analysis of the justice and prison systems, I'll take this as an important first step. And I do think it is a first step, a giant one, because hints of a second step are visible in some of the language being used to justify the shift:

"Maybe we swung that pendulum too far and need to reach a cost-effective middle ground here," said Marc Levin, director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which launched the advocacy group last month. "We have to distinguish between those we are afraid of and those we are just mad at." [Emphasis added]

And let's face it, at this point, conservatives are going to have an easier time of it when it comes to such reform than liberals would. Since both sides of the aisle have an interest in the reform, this is one time when some bipartisanship is quite welcome.

Criminals On Both Sides Of The Bars

The Sacramento Bee had an absolutely stunning article in yesterday's edition, one that promises to raise the heat in discussions of the California prison system and the all-powerful prison guards union. The investigative piece details some of the most horrific behavior imaginable, only the bad guys in the article aren't the prisoners, but those assigned to guard them.

Here's is just one of the scenarios presented:

On May 26, 2004, Hernandez, then 21, had the misfortune of crossing paths with Officer David Sharpe between rows of beds. Sharpe said Hernandez struck the guard's chest with his elbow. Another guard said he heard Sharpe grunt. Hernandez denies any such attack.

In sworn statements, witnesses said that Sharpe, who stands 6 feet tall and weighed about 300 pounds, bear-hugged Hernandez – 5 feet 9 and 140 pounds – from behind. He threw Hernandez head-first into a metal locker. Hernandez fell to the floor, with Sharpe on top of him, then twitched and jerked violently. Blood pooled near his head.

In a subsequent court proceeding, Sharpe confirmed those events but faulted the confined area and said he did not intentionally injure Hernandez. ...

Back in his cell weeks later, Hernandez suffered from facial paralysis, seizures and vomiting, according to medical records. He also had to defend himself against the serious charge of assaulting an officer.

Hernandez told The Bee he didn't get a fair hearing because key evidence was barred. The prison investigator disallowed photographs of the scene, a complaint by other inmates alleging criminal misconduct by Sharpe, and statements from FBI examiners, according to his report.

Also rejected by the investigator was Hernandez's "stress voice analysis" – a lie-detection method – conducted by High Desert internal affairs, which the inmate claimed proved his innocence.

The investigator did include in his report accounts of inmates, who said they saw Sharpe attack Hernandez without provocation. None said Hernandez attacked the officer and no guards witnessed the event.

The hearing referred to is one held to mete out punishment to prisoners who have misbehaved, and the article makes it clear that most, if not all, of those hearings are deliberately stacked against the prisoner and the results preordained. If the hearing officer doesn't follow the script, he himself is subject to informal punishment by his superiors and peers.

Current and former correctional officers said guilty findings often were preordained informally and hearing officers knew they would be in trouble with higher-ups if they didn't consistently find inmates guilty.

Gerald Edwards, a former lieutenant at Calipatria State Prison east of San Diego, said he conducted about 100 rule-violation hearings in the last few years of his 24-year prison career. In 2009, Edwards alleges he was harassed by superiors after ruling in favor of inmates four or five times.

Once the ruling comes down, however, the punishment is swift: loss of "good-behavior" time (which is one criterion for early release), being locked up in an isolated part of the prison ("the hole"), or transfer to another facility, one usually populated with the prisoner's enemies (opposing gangs).

I am fully aware that most of the prison population are no angels. A high proportion of them are there on drug charges, usually coupled with illegal arms charges. Many are violent offenders. They are not particularly nice people. That said, however, they still are entitled to certain basic rights, including due process.

Complicating matters further, the California prison system itself is broken. A federal judge has found the prisons unacceptably over-crowded and conditions deplorable. There is inadequate space, lousy food, and practically non-existent medical care. The whole scenario looks to be lifted from those dreadful prison movies of the 1950s.

The Bee has come forward with a remarkable story, one that should be read and should be read into the record at future investigative hearings for inmate misbehavior and at legislative hearings looking into the state prison system. It should also be mailed to the Department of Justice. The feds really need to look into this deplorable state of affairs.

Kids Faring Badly

More fun for the kids in Texas - yesterday it was homelessness, today it's fight clubs for the institutionalized. Not long ago it was physical and sexual abuse in Texas Youth Commission jails. It's about time some one in this state took a hard look at protections for our kids. Legislation before the legislature suddenly got pushed into passage yesterday, because of the bad publicity. Last month, staff cuts had been recommended for budget reasons, at the very reform school most implicated in abuse of residents.

Governor Perry's office had been contacted by more than one person concerned at abuse in state facilities, it turned from investigations into the TYC abuses. Since then, he has been instrumental in privatizing the care of kids.

It also can certainly be said about homelessness that the governor has given it a boost. Much homelessness is caused by growing unemployment, a cause the governor has publicly and proudly denounced in refusing federal support for unemployed workers.

Today the governor's office loudly declared its support of the legislation that was passed so suddenly after the news of 'fight clubs' broke. This should be an interesting gubernatorial campaign indeed.

Responding to reports of abusive treatment and neglect at Texas' large homes for the mentally disabled, the state Senate approved safeguards Monday designed to improve care and oversight.

Still to come are debates about whether Texas should move toward closing some of the 13 institutions, but the 30-0 vote to boost investigative powers and provide better staff training and background checks was the first major step toward improving conditions for the nearly 5,000 residents, many of whom are severely disabled.

"They need our protection," said Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, who sponsored the Senate bill. "They need our oversight. And they need our compassion."

A 2008 federal report cited negligent and abusive care that violated residents' rights. It cited 53 deaths linked to preventable conditions at the institutions known as state schools.

The report also called hundreds of reports of abuse and injuries to patients "disturbingly high" and said more than half of state facilities are in danger of losing Medicaid funding because of care and safety problems.

In the discovery of the 'fight clubs' in Corpus Christi, kids found a proponent they had been missing. The press worked for them, reporting scandalous conditions that would have been given short shrift under normal conditions. Fortune usually wouldn't be so good; like economic crisis in the U.S., adults' bad behavior has become the force needed to get protection for kids.

"These people are charged with the care and custody of these clients, and they are exploiting (them)," he said.

Those involved will likely face charges of injury of a disabled person, Wilson said. The charge's severity can range up to a third-class felony, depending on the extent of a person's involvement, he said. The actual charges, however are left up to the Nueces County District Attorney, which is participating in the investigation along with the Texas Inspector General's Office, he said.
(snip)
"The fighting entails pushing, wrestling and some shoving," Wilson said. Police do not believe anyone was seriously injured, he said, but the investigation is ongoing.

"Four or five clients have been identified and at least five workers, possibly as many as 10," he said. "Some are more active in staging the fights, and some others passively stand around not doing anything."

Way to go, neanderthals. Having a bit of good old-fashioned abusive behavior on tape is a beginning for just the cure your kind need. The legislators got the shoving they needed to get some one watching over the kids. Lucky for the kids, the guards who got their kicks out of violence really helped out on this reform.

I'll turn over the recommendation for the "guardians'" treatment to you. Suggestions? and yes, that includes the governor who promoted this system.

Prison Reform

The New York Times published a very sensible editorial on December 31, 2008, one which I missed the first time around. Fortunately, a Kossack diarist didn't, for which I am grateful.

The editorial noted and praised Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) for his bringing to national attention the enormous number of people in prison in this country (the "mass incarceration"), many for non-violent and victimless crimes such as drug related offenses. One part of the editorial particularly struck me:

Mr. Webb says he intends to introduce legislation to create a national commission to investigate these issues. With Barack Obama in the White House, and strong Democratic majorities in Congress, the political climate should be more favorable than it has been in years. And the economic downturn should make both federal and state lawmakers receptive to the idea of reforming a prison system that is as wasteful as it is inhumane.

Prison reform resonates a great deal in California, especially since the state's prison system and its inability to provide decent medical care for its inmates is currently in the hands of a federal receiver appointed as a result of a federal lawsuit against the state. That federal receiver wants the state to spend $8 billion to cure the intolerable situation, money the state just doesn't have right now.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest budget proposal includes a section addressing the issue. From yesterday's Sacramento Bee:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest budget proposal would reduce by tens of thousands the number of criminals behind bars and under community supervision.

Parole would be eliminated for all nonserious, nonviolent and non-sex offenders. The proposal would cut the parole population by about 65,000 by June 30, 2010, or more than half of the Christmas Eve count of 123,144.

At the same time, the corrections plan calls for increasing good-time credits for inmates who obey the rules and complete rehabilitation programs. Combined with the new parole policies that would result in fewer violators forced back into custody, the proposal would reduce the prison population by 15,000 by June 30, 2010. It stood at 171,542 on Dec. 24.

The plan is very close to the one included in the budget submitted by the Democratic controlled legislature, but the governor vetoed that budget for reasons unconnected to the prison reform section. He apparently was impressed enough to include the measure in his own plan, and for that he deserves some praise. The motive may be to save the state money, but the result would be to free many people who should not be in prison for minor parole violations, or who should not be in prison in the first place.

And, just as important, the state would not have to continue to build new prisons to adequately house the population which continues to grow because of antiquated and misguided policies based on years of fear-mongering "law and order" laments.

The correctional officer's union (probably the most powerful union in the state) has already damned the proposal, obviously fearing a loss of jobs (and power), but it's clear that union leaders haven't considered the impact less crowded prisons would have on their members' safety. This is one time the union should step back and realize that their interests and the state's are not really at odds.

Sen. Webb's proposal for a national commission to study the nation's prison system is a sound one, and it will hopefully result in more rational and humane ways of treating all offenders, especially those guilty of nothing more than possession of drugs for personal use. In the mean time, however, given the budget problems of California, Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal is a timely one.

A Just Decision

Sometimes there is a person who makes those annual silly contests for Person of the Year worth our while. In 2008, Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins has turned around an errant justice system, and in naming him their Texan of the Year, the Dallas Morning News has made a great choice.

Mr. Watkins has trained a spotlight on the flaws in the system, and two years after becoming the state's first black district attorney, he is suddenly the new face of Texas jurisprudence.

For his efforts to reform an imperfect criminal justice system and for his willingness to stake out politically precarious territory somewhere between "hug a thug" and "convict at all costs," Mr. Watkins is the 2008 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year.

In his own words, DA Watkins tells us a lot about what has made him seek to open a badly run justice system to review, resulting in overturning convictions on DNA evidence, a process that has freed 19 innocent men to date.

This is about progress. In order to have progress, we have to talk about failures of the system. And to be absolutely honest with you, I don't think that [former District Attorney Henry] Wade was a bad person. I just think that he was a product of his environment. As a result of that, we had all these bad things that were done. ... In order for us to move past it, we've got to deal with it. There are going to be some hurt feelings as a result of that. But at the end of the day, it's the right thing to do."

"With power, there comes a lot of responsibility. I think a lot of times, in the past, we've had individuals who have misused it. I just hope that as I go along in this job that I will always have a respect for it and never get into the position of misusing what's been given to me."

"I'm surprised that people who are intelligent and who have been in this field for a long time don't even want to give any credibility to that thought [that an innocent man has been executed]. It's obvious that that's happened."

"On some of our more serious cases ... I just kind of sit down there and listen, and then I go back to talk to the jury [after the trial]. Without a doubt everyone that I've talked to, they all say that we believe in what you're doing because when you ask us to convict someone and take their freedom, we've seen the other side of it. You've used your resources to ensure that no one's wrongly convicted. We believe that you would only ask if it's absolutely necessary. So, we have a lot of credibility with the citizens."

"Politics is the greatest equalizer. You can come from the most meager existence and make a difference. That's the good thing about this country. I saw that was my entree into being in a position of making a positive impact on where I live."

We are very fortunate that in Dallas' 2006 election, Craig Watkins won the office he holds, and that he has used to benefit the city in a very big way. It is a hopeful sign that by turning political offices back into the right place for public servants, an informed electorate can turn back the many years of crimes by elected officials. Hopefully, that can begin to happen on a national level on January 20th.

Voters for a return of justice have earned the right to be proud.

Project Innocence Suffers SEC Neglect

The victims of wrongful conviction have suffered already from our system's failures. It appears they are about to get another hit from the opponents of regulation and law. The demise of Bernard Makoff's ponzi scheme has hit them with huge losses, as Project Innocence was largely funded by JEHT, which has been wiped out.

Panic ensued at the Innocence Project of Texas when a powerful Wall Street investor was arrested this month and accused of swindling investors out of $50 billion.

One of the organizations that had invested with Bernard Madoff was the JEHT Foundation, which funds post-conviction DNA tests for Dallas County inmates who claim they are innocent. Without the funding, the Innocence Project would be faced with trying to raise capital in a bad economy and those seeking tests could face indefinite delays, if the testing could be done at all.

But after a few days of concern, Innocence Project officials realized the money received so far – about $400,000 – was theirs to keep, said the organization's executive director Natalie Roetzel. And while additional money promised for computers, staff and investigations won't make its way to the Innocence Project, Ms. Roetzel said, "I think it's going to turn out OK."

Both Ms. Roetzel and Dallas County First Assistant District Attorney Terri Moore said there probably are enough funds to complete all the DNA testing.

If not, Ms. Roetzel said, they will seek other grants and hold private fundraisers.

"The money should get us through what needs to be tested," said Ms. Moore.
(snip)
Just before Mr. Madoff's arrest, the JEHT Foundation was in talks with Dallas County to give as much as $15 million to fund programs with the district attorney's office and the probation department.

Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said the talks had not advanced to specifics but said the foundation was committed to giving more money.

"That hurt," said Mr. Watkins. "That hurt."

Dallas has the highest number of releases, but Project Innocence has many other places needing its justice healing activities.

In February, DNA testing and a confession by another suspect confirmed that Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both convicted in the early 1990s for sep­arate child murders in Noxubee County, (Mississippi) were innocent. But during trial, West had testified that multiple marks on the victims’ bodies were bite marks, which he then matched to the men. That testi­mony has been proven false, says Peter Neufeld, Innocence Project co-director.

Large numbers of charitable investments were lost in the Makoff wipe-out. There are lawsuits in the early stages against a number of them. Those entrusted with funds are never supposed to invest in one firm alone, and it appears that this cardinal law was violated by a number of charities whose directors became enamored of Makoff's consistent high returns.

The SEC appears to be among that number. While not supposed to be a charity, it has acted as if it were. It is a recipient of U.S. taxpayer charitable funds, since it is not doing the job it should be earning that amount to do.

You can help Project Innocence continue its work here. It should have been receiving millions to defend the innocent. We, the innocent taxpayers, are losing even more.

*****************************************************

Also found this morning that those losing their jobs because of disability are faced with a two-year wait before they can start receiving Medicare. For many that means they are going without treatment, sometimes badly needed. This makes no sense.

While most of the 40 million Americans covered under Medicare are age 65 and older, nearly 6 million qualify because of severe and permanent disabilities. Unlike older Americans, who typically enroll and become eligible for coverage within months of turning age 65, disabled beneficiaries must wait two years before their coverage takes effect. Many who are in the waiting period face enormous problems. In this study, researchers talked to these individuals in focus groups and through in-depth telephone interviews. Participants reported skipping medications, putting off needed care, feeling depressed and anxious about the future, and believing they were not in control of their own lives. To alleviate their plight, the researchers recommend that Congress eliminate the waiting period, expand Medicaid eligibility, and subsidize COBRA insurance coverage. Beneficiaries also need better, more consistent information regarding their options for accessing health care and coverage.

How do government programs get so screwy? Lobbyists descend on the legislators to bend authorizing legislation as much to their demands, and as little to actual public need, as they can manage.

26 days more.

Project Innocence Making A Difference

The growing number of convicts cleared of crimes, which I have mentioned several times, is a promising trend in justice. Today I found this at TalkLeft, from TChris.

Speaking of police crime labs that produce unreliable results, the Innocence Project recently asked the Maryland state police to investigate the Baltimore police crime lab.

The Innocence Project, a national group of lawyers who try to exonerate convicts based largely on new DNA evidence, wrote in the complaint that "serious negligence or misconduct substantially affecting the integrity of forensic results has occurred at the Baltimore Police Department Crime Laboratory... Recently, the BPD-CL revealed that a lab employee working in the DNA lab contaminated evidence in approximately 12 open cases."

Lab staff didn't wear gloves when handling evidence, and the lab failed to enter the DNA profiles of its staff members into its database, causing staff contaminations to appear as "unknowns." These were among the failures of management that caused the crime lab's director to be canned in August.

[T]he Innocence Project alleged the contamination "can incorrectly steer investigators away from identifying criminals, can weaken criminal prosecutions [by suggesting that another, unidentified person's DNA was present at the crime scene], and can lead police to discount what should be strong DNA evidence and instead focus on innocent suspects."

As to whether the state police will accept the invitation to investigate the crime lab: a spokesperson says they're "carefully considering" the complaint but can't say when they might respond.

The number of convictions overturned by DNA evidence speaks loudly about the need to make sure our Rule of Law is truly carried out in criminal cases. We have a way to go before we can reach a point where everyone has equal access to justice, but Project Innocence is doing very good work to reach it.

Crimes and Punishment

The same maladministration that gave us torture,in the name of terrorism, that has disgraced us now is under indictment for mistreatment of prisoners. Darth Cheney and Alberto Gonzales teamed up to make money off of privatizing prisons and prevent investigation of their offenses. Though it appears the DA filing the charges is not being taken seriously, the fact that the Cheneys are making money off of prison mistreatment as well as war profiteering does seem to fit a pattern of inhumanity and corruption.

These are the lowest form of life. They have shown it over and over. I have to admit, I am inclined to agree that Obama's executive branch is making a wrong choice to leave them alone and just ignore the crimes.

With two months still to go before his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama and his transition team are already getting off on the wrong foot, signaling that they have no intention of investigating anyone in the Bush administration for possible war crimes.

What we're talking about here is the torture of detained terrorist suspects in American custody in a grotesque violation of both our treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions and our historic principles as a democratic nation.

By their own machinations and attempts to redefine and pervert both treaties and our own laws, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington and any number of lesser suspects sought to shield themselves from, or put themselves above, justice.

They did so knowing full well that what they were doing — clearing the way for interrogators at Guantanamo and in the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret dungeons around the world to do anything it took, short of murder, to extract information from terror suspects.

The "harsh interrogation methods" included water-boarding, stripping and humiliating prisoners, subjecting them to extremes of temperature, putting them into stressful physical positions for hours, the use of psychotropic drugs and doubtless other equally uncivilized practices.

Water boarding has always been treated as a criminal act in this country. Military officers were court-martialed at the turn of the last century for water boarding Filipino guerrillas. More recently, an East Texas sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for water boarding a suspect and extracting a confession from him.

Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, and its no way to begin an administration that was elected on promises of change. What it says is that if you're one of the elite and powerful, your violations of the law will be overlooked, no matter how much damage you did to our country’s standing in the world.

What signal does it send to Mr. Bush's gang of unindicted co-conspirators, who've unwrapped a Pandora’s boxful of other offenses — from perverting the administration of justice, to illegally eavesdropping on the phone conversations and e-mails of ordinary Americans, to salting the stream of intelligence with bogus material, to inviting their cronies to loot the Treasury with no-bid military contracts, to lying under oath to congressional oversight committees, to applying political litmus tests to the hiring of civil service employees to the wholesale destruction of White House e-mails and records? Etcetera. Etcetera.

This nation was founded on the principle of equal justice under the law. No one — no one — ought to be able to skate or hold a get-out-of-jail-free card by virtue of having been the most powerful felon in the land, or of working for him.

The most powerful felon sits in that undisclosed location for good reason. He is a criminal, and not legitimately elected. It is not a good precedent to let crimes go unindicted, and unprosecuted. We need to take up that cause, and insist that our nation is ill served if this disgrace is allowed to go on.

Condoning Murder

The more I encounter reports about the functioning of our legal system, the more I am becoming convinced that it has covered for viciousness directed against the less fortunate in this country.

ProfessorWombat and I had a conversation, something of a continuing one, on the subject this morning in the comment section of Eschaton. He has seen injustices that have convinced him we have to cure the injustice system that we have in place, a conviction Dallas' County Attorney is bringing into prevalence throughout those of conscience in the North Texas area.

A group of death-row survivors called on the Texas Legislature on Friday to halt executions in the nation's most active death-penalty state and establish an innocence commission to free other wrongfully convicted inmates.

EXONERATED

Clarence Brandley of Conroe, Texas, and 19 other men who were on other states' death rows appeared at the state Capitol to ask for the moratorium on the death penalty. Mr. Brandley spent nine years on Texas' death row before being exonerated in the murder of a Conroe teenager.

INNOCENTS EXECUTED?

"There have been some innocent people that have been executed right here in Texas. But the politicians are not going to say that." – Mr. Brandley

FORMER DA

Former Bexar County District Attorney Sam Millsap, who once supported capital punishment, said he now believes he probably sent an innocent man to the death chamber – Ruben Cantu, who was convicted of a 1984 murder on the account of a single eyewitness. (Emphasis added.)

The ignorance we have maintained about operations of our judicial and prison system has been washed away in recent revelations about its miscarriage of justice. ProfessorWombat's comment says what he has been led to believe, and is something I've come to as well.

Ruth: anybody involved in the criminal justice system knows it to be deeply flawed. The prison system, the easy recourse to incarceration in brutal circumstances, the wildly different rates of incarceration for similar offenses amongst rich, poor, black, white and Hispanic, the huge numbers incarcerated here compared with other countries, the notion that prisons can be run for private profit.

I rant about this stuff from time to time. I think that, in a sane world, our criminal justice and prison system would constitute a human rights emergency, and reform would be a top priority. But in this country, prison rape is a national joke, the knee-jerk response to any wrong-doing at all is to lock 'em up, and the huge human and monetary cost, not to mention the system's dubious effectiveness in its stated mission, go largely unchallenged. It's a disgrace.
ProfWombat | 11.02.08 - 7:23 am | #

Their experience in powerlessness and these abuses that have resulted have made it vital to our neglected classes to bring an end to them. In Dallas, the 2006 defeat of all GoPerv judicial system incumbents has meant a real reform. This is needed throughout the country.

Treatment of Youth Funded by Pharma

The Texas Youth Prison system has come under well-deserved criticism after abuse and maltreatment were turned up. Now it seems to get the drugs to mistreat kids, researchers turned to pharmaceutical companies for the funds to study those companies' products.

-Pharmaceutical company money, initially rejected as being ethically questionable, was eventually sought and used by researchers developing a list of preferred psychiatric drugs for children in state care, according to documents reviewed by The Dallas Morning News.

A spot on the since-suspended children's drug plan could have meant millions to pharmaceutical firms. The documents released to The News were collected by the Texas attorney general's office, which is suing a pharmaceutical company accused of trying to influence researchers on a similar adult drug plan.

Citing the pending lawsuit over the adult plan, officials in two state health agencies declined to comment on the Children's Medication Algorithm Project, or CMAP – which was put on indefinite hold in May. The researchers have insisted that pharmaceutical companies never influenced their work.

The CMAP records obtained by The News don't refute this. Nor were the researchers banned from soliciting funding from drug companies.

However, the records reflect a common pattern in state and university medical programs. Unable to get ample government funding, researchers are increasingly forced to rely on drug company money – even when it's their last resort.

When CMAP was started in the late 1990s, researchers were loath to accept pharmaceutical grant funding. At an April 1998 meeting, "it was concluded that we should try to avoid this if possible," according to minutes of a meeting between CMAP researchers.

By June 1999, researchers needed more grant money and had changed their minds. CMAP's director, M. Lynn Crismon, head of the University of Texas College of Pharmacy, wrote to at least 10 drug companies, asking for donations.

"Although we have received grant funding in support of this effort," he wrote, "these amounts fall short of the funds required to complete this important outcomes project."

By late that year, CMAP budgets included pledges for $10,000 a year from Wyeth and Pfizer, an $80,000 one-time grant from Forest Laboratories, and $70,000 from Eli Lilly. While a few of the line items seem to limit the grant to CMAP's "patient and family education" program, others are listed as unrestricted CMAP "research gifts."

When, in 2006, questions surfaced about drug company connections to the adult drug plan, however, CMAP researchers were again cautious about drug company money.

And as recently as this spring, Dr. Crismon assured top state health officials there was no pharmaceutical link to CMAP, saying that any drug company money was used for a patient and family education study unrelated to CMAP.

The incredible malfunction of TX government continues to amaze. Anyone with any relative caught up in this system ought to take the time, and trouble, to extract them. Our legal system is needed to correct this system from top to bottom.

The state has shown over and over again that it does not qualify to run any system, much less one that has troubled youth in its charge.

Preventing Wrongful Charges: Project Innocence

After having found a growing number of convicted prisoners innocent when DNA was brought in, Dallas Police Department has come to review the process that convicted those innocent people. Commendably, the Dallas Morning News began an investigation that has pinpointed 'showups', the use of single suspect lineups, as one cause of the errors.

Eyewitness identifications are unreliable in general, but when only one suspect is presented to that eyewitness, the possibility of error balloons.

A review by the department that began Monday already has challenged long-held beliefs that such showups are rare.

"I had an idea this was minimal," Assistant Chief Ron Waldrop said. "But that's not true. Even though the numbers are low, it's a common thing."

The ongoing review, primarily of robbery cases, has identified more than 60 in which showups were used. Chief Kunkle said that the department will analyze each showup to make sure it was done properly.

The changes at DPD could serve as a model to departments nationwide, one eyewitness identification expert said.

Gary Wells, an Iowa State University psychology professor, called the department's decision "a great move."

"My guess is what it's going to show is that showups are happening a lot, and therefore that's where we need to put more of our attention," Dr. Wells said.

Police departments have largely ignored recommendations by Dr. Wells and other scholars over the last two decades to limit showups. Dr. Wells said pressure on police agencies has intensified because of DNA exonerations and the media attention they have received.

Police departments "are going to find it harder and harder to hold out when there are places like a Dallas that step forward," he said. "Any event like that, and especially for a jurisdiction as large as Dallas, is going to be a positive development, and it's going to help speed up reform."

Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas, said he commends DPD for its new policy but also has concerns.

"This is a lame excuse designed to cover up decades of past wrongdoing," said Mr. Blackburn, who has worked to free some of Dallas County's DNA exonerees. Mr. Blackburn is co-counsel in two federal civil rights lawsuits against DPD on behalf of DNA exonerees involved in showups.

Dallas County leads the nation with 19 convictions invalidated by DNA since 2001. Texas, with 36 such exonerations, leads all other states.

The move to make police work more reliable is a promising one. As regard for rights of individuals makes inroads in our prison system, it becomes ever more evident that the police have not been held to very high standards. All of us are at risk, not just the guilty.

Anyone who's ever had a run-in with the power of the police, something I encountered indirectly recently, finds out to some dismay that you are unlikely to encounter fair or balanced treatment. Arbitrary powers, used mostly on a community that has long been unable to expect respect, has made a lot of our police forces into demagogues. The beginnings that Project Innocence, and some responsible media, are causing are a benefit to all of us.

Jail for Actual Criminals

The title shouldn't be about a real problem. In Dallas, however, the men in jail under the last prosecutor were all to often innocent, while the guilty went free. The County Attorney who has been active in freeing the innocent thinks it's time to turn that around.

Troubled that innocent people have been imprisoned by faulty prosecutions, District Attorney Craig Watkins said Monday that he would re-examine nearly 40 death penalty convictions and would seek to halt executions, if necessary, to give the reviews time to proceed.

Mr. Watkins told The Dallas Morning News that problems exposed by 19 DNA-based exonerations in Dallas County have convinced him he should ensure that no death row inmate is actually innocent.
DMN File
DMN File
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins

"It's not saying I'm putting a moratorium on the death penalty," said Mr. Watkins, whose reviews would be of all of the cases now on death row handled by his predecessors. "It's saying that maybe we should withdraw those dates and look at those cases from a new perspective to make sure that those individuals that are on death row need to be there and they need to be executed."

He cited the exonerations and stories by The News about problems with those prosecutions as the basis for his decision. The exonerations have routinely revealed faulty eyewitness testimony and, in a few cases, prosecutorial misconduct.
(snip)
Mr. Waller was cleared of a 1992 robbery-rape. The statute of limitations to prosecute the true perpetrators has expired even though they have admitted to the crimes. Had previous District Attorney Bill Hill not denied testing, the results could have prevented one of the men from being paroled.

"That's really what got me to thinking," Mr. Watkins said. "This is larger than just having innocent folks in jail. This is about having criminals out on the street with cover to go and commit their offenses."

Justice has taken some severe blows under the occupied White House, but in Dallas it has regained a place in the system. Jail had been used under the last, 'tough', prosecutor to end cases, not to administer justice. The bad associations have been plowed under by opening records to honest and determined Innocence Project researchers.

With DNA evidence now having overturned 20 convictions, the need to stop executions which may be now facing those who are innocent of the crimes they have been sentenced for is obvious. Justice is being served and the guilty no longer left free to commit more crimes, under Watkins' office. This is all for the good.

Jail Bites Back

It's never been something I gave much attention, but the series MotherJones.com is publishing now on prisons has given me a great deal to consider. We've been shutting away problems, and now those problems have grown, festered, and are eating us alive. The expense of throwing people in jail is huge, in many ways we are just beginning to be socked with.

Judges have repeatedly found that California has violated the constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment and ordered sweeping improvements. In each case, the Prison Law Office has won the right to oversee the fixes, which can take ages; the case heard in January is about 29 years old. Specter and his 11 colleagues currently oversee court orders covering medical, dental, and mental health care for inmates; disabled prisoners; the parole system; and juvenile prisons, among others. The firm's $3 million budget is largely supplied by the state, which has to pay the plaintiffs' fees every time it loses a case, which is just about every time.

"We don't like to say it, but they practically run things," explains Jeanne Woodford, who went from being a guard at San Quentin to becoming its warden and then the head of the state corrections department under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger until she quit in frustration two years ago. "The bureaucracy, the way it is structured, cannot keep up with what they have to do at all. Under the normal process, it takes a year to change a rule, a simple rule. The court says, 'Do this,' and you just do it. Believe me, we'd get none of the resources we really need if it weren't for the litigation and the Prison Law Office."

Even James Tilton, secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, admitted in an interview before his sudden resignation in April that Specter's work serves a purpose. "I'm trying to break that old system down," he said, "but there are some areas where the litigation can be helpful."

Specter doesn't embrace the burden of reforming the prison system one lawsuit at a time, but he sees little alternative. "I've tried persuasion," he says. "We tried coercion. We've tried the press. I haven't found anything else except litigation and the courts. As frustrating as litigation is, it's the only thing that I've seen that's effective—and it's not very effective."
(snip)
There is little disagreement that the status quo is unsustainable, yet the system just keeps on ballooning. Even as Schwarzenegger has promised reform, the corrections budget has exploded during his term, from $4.7 billion in fiscal 2004 to nearly $10 billion in fiscal 2007, or about $49,000 for each adult inmate. In contrast, the 220,000-student University of California system gets less than $4 billion annually. The prisons' operating costs do not include the $7.7 billion that Schwarzenegger and the Legislature have agreed to spend on adding thousands of new beds to ease overcrowding. Nor does it include the additional $7 billion the state will spend to improve health care for prisoners—as mandated by yet another federal case won by the Prison Law Office.

Meanwhile, services for prisoners have all but collapsed, from literacy classes (nearly one-fifth of California's inmates leave prison totally illiterate despite a law mandating that they read at a ninth-grade level before release) to medical care. In 2005, after a federal judge found that an inmate a week was dying due to incompetence or inadequate care, he placed the prison health care system under a court-appointed administrator. "This statistic, awful as it is, barely provides a window into the waste of human life occurring behind California's prison walls," wrote the exasperated judge.

There is much more to this article, and it hits me hard in the gut that we are not so much locking up criminals, but sweeping them under the rug. That rug isn't an answer, and it's no longer even a hiding place.

We all got a chuckle out of the Dallas County idea to charge prisoners for their luxury suites. It's not going to work, but what is going to work may be about to latch onto us all, in a very real way.

The problems are growing in every area while the right wing keeps high offices well supplied with non-functional paycheck recipients. We will have a lot to deal with when we finally get them out.

Bill For Guest Services

As prices skyrocket upwards, locales are having increasing difficulties in meeting expenses. Of course, so are the residents. Crime is increasing, and so is the price of running the police forces, the courts, the jails.

Give it up for Dallas County. They have the solution. Charge the inmates for their stay in jail.

Would I kid you?

In a Dallas County budget crisis, everyone has to pay more for services – even jail inmates.

County officials want to charge misdemeanor offenders a daily $25 room-and-board fee while they serve their jail sentences.

It's never been tried here before, but state law allows it. It will be up to individual judges to decide whether to impose such a fee.

The problem is how to collect. The law doesn't provide a consequence for failing to pay. And indigent offenders can request the fee be waived.

Ron Stretcher, the county's criminal justice director, said that before judges can impose the fee, they have to consider other fines and fees owed by the inmate, whether the person is indigent, and whether he or she has been ordered to pay restitution for the crime.

But if offenders are able to pay, they should, he said.

"They need to pay their way," he said.

Commissioner John Wiley Price expressed doubt, however, about the county's ability to collect, given that more than $200 million in traffic and court fines remain outstanding. Mr. Price addressed the issue during Friday's weekly jail population meeting attended by county criminal justice employees.

Mr. Price said he supports the concept but doesn't think it will add up to a lot of money. The number of people who would be able to pay the fine, he said, is a "small universe." In addition, county officials are currently looking for ways to reduce the number of people serving county time in the jails.

I am waiting for the first prisoner to plead that he had to steal to pay his jail bill. Gentlemen, start your engines.

Now, what do you charge for false imprisonment?

Death By Diet

Just back from my little garden, which is calling me to water it several times a day now that we're over 105F. It keeps producing elitist lettuce, somehow, and my brussels sprouts are coming along nicely. Then I read a prison menu at MotherJones and am really glad I have those fresh good things. Why don't they let prisoners feed themselves what they grow at these places?

Oh, right, the Cheneys are making their living off of the jail system.

FEAR AND LOAFING
VERMONT PRISONERS SAY NUTRALOAF IS CRUEL AND UNUSUAL NOURISHMENT. PRISON OFFICIALS SAY IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER.

"Nutraloaf is a 'food product' composed of 'whole wheat bread, non-dairy cheese, raw carrots, spinach, seedless raisins, Great Northern beans, vegetable oil, tomato paste, powdered milk, and dehydrated potato flakes;' these ingredients are 'mixed and baked.'" —Vermont appellate court brief, November 2006

"Nutraloaf is neither punishment, nor is its quality inferior to that of regular inmate meals...[It] is only provided to inmates who are placed in segregated confinement for the misuse of food and bodily waste." —Prison official's legal memorandum, Vermont Superior Court, September 2005

"If defendant wants to continue to spin out his Orwellian fantasy, and claim that nutraloaf is of the same 'quality' as normal prison food, this Court need only order a judicial tasting." —Prisoners' memorandum, Vermont Superior Court, September 2005

MEAN CUISINE
Prison moonshine, or pruno, is made by sealing fruit, sugar, ketchup, and water in a garbage bag, often stored inside a toilet for several days.

Tired of mess-hall food, some prisoners prepare "prison pizza"—a crust of ramen noodles and crushed chips or crackers, topped with cheese spread and sausage.

This sounds like offal from the school kitchen where I went to grammar school, something you wouldn't feed your family and they wouldn't eat. Doesn't it seem reasonable to let prisoners take care of their own needs, instead of making license plates? Making a plate of food instead would teach them something they could use, and give them the exercise they need.

I will offer you a few good pictures - Larry,DFH's pumpkin and my elitist lettuce. That looks to me like something that would engage a prison population - that would be doing something better for themselves than is being done for them.

Can the loaf.

The Prison State

Adam Liptak had a terrific column on the burgeoning US prison population in Wednesday's NY Times. The comparison of the US statistics with the rest of the world was staggering.

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

One explanation for the disparity is the fact that the US tends to have a lot of crimes committed with guns, which are easily accessible in the country, unlike the rest of the world. In most states, the use of a gun in the commission of a crime results in enhanced sentencing. But more has to be at work here.

Despite the recent decline in the murder rate in the United States, it is still about four times that of many nations in Western Europe.

But that is only a partial explanation. The United States, in fact, has relatively low rates of nonviolent crime. It has lower burglary and robbery rates than Australia, Canada and England.

People who commit nonviolent crimes in the rest of the world are less likely to receive prison time and certainly less likely to receive long sentences. The United States is, for instance, the only advanced country that incarcerates people for minor property crimes like passing bad checks, Mr. Whitman wrote.

Efforts to combat illegal drugs play a major role in explaining long prison sentences in the United States as well. In 1980, there were about 40,000 people in American jails and prisons for drug crimes. These days, there are almost 500,000.

As the article makes clear, the authorities, particularly Attorney General Mukasey, are resisting any call for the reduction of sentences for drug offenses. Diversion programs, like those being tried in California for first offenders with minimal amounts of drugs involved (not enough for sales), are still too new to make any definitive conclusions, but they do appear to have had some success, although apprently Mr. Mukasey would disagree with that assessment. He represents that portion of the American public that believes drug offenders are dangerous criminals who need to be locked away, even for a first offense.

But it is not just the frequency with which incarceration is used as a sentence which distinguishes the American justice system from the rest of the world. The length of our sentences far exceeds those of our world neighbors.

Still, it is the length of sentences that truly distinguishes American prison policy. Indeed, the mere number of sentences imposed here would not place the United States at the top of the incarceration lists. If lists were compiled based on annual admissions to prison per capita, several European countries would outpace the United States. But American prison stays are much longer, so the total incarceration rate is higher.

That rate, according to some analyses may be as high as 1% of the American population, which I find astounding. Given the cost to states for the building and running of prisons for that many people, it is no wonder that state budgets are beginning to buckle under the strain. Californians are beginning to realize this first hand.

While there are those who would argue that those who break the law must pay for their malfeasance, I don't see why locking people away for years for non-violent and/or victimless crimes is particularly necessary in a civilized society. It's time to revisit this aspect of our justice system.

Clean Cups! Clean Cups!

The current California budget crisis has just had a new dimension added to it, one that state legislators could have and should have foreseen: the federal receiver of the state's prison system has requested $7 billion over and above the money set aside by the state for the construction of new prisons. The request (which is actually a command, given the receiver's status) comes at a time when the state has found it necessary to cut funding to schools, cut funding to social services, and to close dozens of state parks because of a budget shortfall which might very well reach $16.5 billion. And, as this editorial in today's Los Angeles Times makes clear, the legislators have no one to blame but themselves.

Lawmakers are crying foul about the added burden on the budget, even though they have no one but themselves to blame. A prison crisis that combines overcrowding, a negligent healthcare program and a crumbling juvenile justice system has been worseningfor three decades, during which time dozens of studies have chronicled the problems and pointed the way to solving them. The reports are now gathering dust on a shelf somewhere, ignored by lawmakers. Indeed, legislators and the electorate have decisively made matters worse by approving get-tough-on-crime initiatives that further cram prisons and do nothing to address conditions inside.

One of the latest studies, released in January 2007 by the independent state oversight agency known as the Little Hoover Commission, is a model of the form. It practically shrieked at lawmakers to implement the needed reforms, which include creating an independent sentencing commission that could lengthen terms for the most dangerous criminals while creating community-based options for nonviolent offenders, reinventing the state's disastrously inefficient parole system and expanding prison-based drug rehabilitation and job-training programs. [Emphasis added]

The "lock 'em up and throw away the key" solution for drug related crimes such as possession of a certain amount of crack and for the commission of a crime under the "third strike" law has done nothing to alleviate any social problems and has in fact exacerbated them. The prison system deteriorated so much that the federal courts have had to step in to force the state to deal with such issues as the non-existence of decent health care for those incarcerated.

The fact is that the state could ameliorate the problem by taking the steps urged by the Little Hoover Commission, but that would require courage, and the pols are notoriously lacking in that kind of spine when it comes to doing something they perceive as unpopular (like raising taxes). So, it takes an order from a federal court to force the state into compliance with certain basic human rights.

The timing is truly unfortunate, but then karma really is a bitch.