Urban Institute projects that Senator Mike Lee's prison reform bill would save $2.5 Billion

The Senator from Utah, Mike Lee, has sponsored a prison reform bill that would do more than just rely on judicial discretion by loosening the rules regarding mandatory minimums and certain drug related offenses. It would cut those minimums in half.

It includes a provision to decrease certain drug-related mandatory minimum sentences by half — a change [the Urban Institute] calls “monumental,” with savings of 240,000 bed-years over a decade. As this chart shows, that would take a substantial bite out of overcrowding. It also translates into savings of at least $2.5 billion – a conservative estimate, because it is based on the assumption that inmates would be added at marginal cost, without the price of building new facilities to house them... 

Estimating the cumulative impact of these changes is difficult, because they have overlapping effects. For now, Urban has only plotted them out in isolation. But the bottom line is that no single option the think tank considered is likely to solve the federal crowding problem – and with it, the Justice Department’s budget problem. 

“If you want to reduce the overcrowding to zero, you're going to need to do more than one of these,” said Nancy La Vigne, a co-author of the report.

Prison Reformer State Rep. Joe Rhodes Jr. of Pennsylvania dies

We lost one of the good ones this week:

Joseph Rhodes Jr., 66, formerly of Pittsburgh, served three terms as Democratic representative for the 24th District (Allegheny County), starting in 1973. He was the youngest African-American elected to the house. 

His interest in prison reform was sparked by seeing juveniles housed with adult criminals at the State Correctional Institution in Camp Hill, said his former wife, Dr. Linda Rhodes. He sponsored legislation in 1977 that amended the Juvenile Justice Act, which diverted status offenders from the juvenile justice system and made it unlawful to hold juveniles in adult jails. He considered passage of Act 41 as his greatest achievement during his three-terms as a lawmaker, Linda Rhodes said. In all, he marshaled passage of nine bills. 

He was an advocate of elderly residents of boarding homes, and introduced several bills to license and raise the standards of such facilities.

How Georgian Child Advocates Helped Bring Transparency to Juvenile Courts

With the recent controversies surrounding Georiga's DFCS, Atlanta's local NBC affiliate talks about how a group of women, originally derided as "martini-sipping, tennis-playing, ladies who lunch", brought some much needed transparency to Georgia's juvenile courts:

So real that the group wanted others to see what they saw as child advocates. They created BetterCourtsForKids.org And in addition to their paying jobs, they spent thousands of hours and drove thousands of miles to personally lobby lawmakers to open the juvenile court for cases involving abused kids.

"What I'd like to see is as many people who can get in to visit their juvenile court," said Alice McQuade, an attorney and another member of the group. "To see what's going on in their neighborhood; see what's happening to the children in their neighborhood; see how the judges are performing."

And that was important, they say, because some of the judges were putting children in danger -- kids like little Adrianna Swain.
Back in 2008, a judge sent her back home from foster care on the advice of DFCS and against the advice of everyone else. Her parents beat her so badly, she was read the last rites, but miraculously survived... 

It turned out that lawmakers cared as well. The very next year they overwhelmingly passed SB-207 to open the juvenile court in cases of deprivation.

Over 3,000 US prisoners serving life without parole for non-violent crimes

This is just incredibly absurd:

A few months later Jackson was convicted of shoplifting and sent to Angola prison in Louisiana. That was 16 years ago. Today he is still incarcerated in Angola, and will stay there for the rest of his natural life having been condemned to die in jail. All for the theft of a jacket, worth $159. 

Jackson, 53, is one of 3,281 prisoners in America serving life sentences with no chance of parole for non-violent crimes. Some, like him, were given the most extreme punishment short of execution for shoplifting; one was condemned to die in prison for siphoning petrol from a truck; another for stealing tools from a tool shed; yet another for attempting to cash a stolen cheque. 

“It has been very hard for me,” Jackson wrote to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as part of its new report on life without parole for non-violent offenders. “I know that for my crime I had to do some time, but a life sentence for a jacket value at $159. I have met people here whose crimes are a lot badder with way less time.”

How could anyone think this is justified? Why aren't these people being pardoned? Not only is it morally reprehensible it has to cost states a lot of tax dollars housing these inmates for the rest of their lives for these petty offenses.

Lance Tapely continues reporting of Maine's supermax brutal state prison

Last week, the intrepid Lance Tapely continued his reporting about the dismal conditions continuing at Maine State Prison, despite some promising reforms:

Maine corrections commissioner Joseph Ponte has reduced the typical number of prisoners in isolation from close to 100 to 40 or so in a 900-man prison. Of the supermax’s four cellblocks or “pods,” two, of Administrative Segregation, have 50 cells each, and one is now empty. The Mental Health Unit, where solitary confinement has never been total, has two pods of 16 cells each, one for “acute” prisoners, one for “stabilization.” Together they held 17 men the day I was there. 

Stays in the supermax also are much shorter now, and there’s a lot less prisoner “cutting up” and fewer brutal cell “extractions” by guards to tie prisoners into the restraint chair. For his reforms, Ponte has deservedly received national attention, helping fuel a still-weak movement to limit solitary confinement. 

But the Maine supermax is still there, and it’s still grim. While 40 prisoners may not sound like many, it’s the total, according to one report, that England and Wales, with 56 million inhabitants, keep in isolation — isolation less severe than in American supermaxes. 

And the supermax is part of a prison from which I receive constant reports of guard cruelty, inadequate medical care, understaffing, deliberate mixing of predators and the vulnerable, and — currently — turmoil because scores more men are being forced to double-bunk. Corrections says the double-bunking is being done for proper “classification” of prisoners. Critics suspect it’s being done to save money.

As Solitary Watch notes, it's important to remember that many prisoners are still languishing in unnecessary solitary confinement despite some recent an incomplete reforms.