Amidst the surging debate over our nation's draconian drug policy and general over-reliance on incarceration, there is one important factor that even the most diehard law & order ideologues can't just brush aside…

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Michigan officials said Friday that the state is closing three prisons and five prison camps in hopes of narrowing a $1.4 billion budget gap for fiscal 2010.

If you can't afford to maintain giant iron cities full of people that must be fed, clothed and monitored 24-7, then you have to stop building them and start closing down the ones you have. This reality is finally beginning to sink in across the country:

Michigan is not alone in turning to its prison system for savings. Some 25 states cut spending on corrections in fiscal 2009 and another 25 are proposing to do so in fiscal 2010, as they struggle to address massive budget shortfalls.

"It's a trend we'll be seeing more and more of in coming months given the dire revenue situation states are in," said Sujit CanagaRetna, senior fiscal analyst at the Council of State Governments, a research group.

Well, bring it on. This isn't exactly what we had in mind when we started calling for criminal justice reform, but we'll take it.

We should never underestimate the extent to which our hideously bloated prison population owes much of its existence to a reversible pattern of public hysteria and reactionary political idiocy. The number of inmates in U.S. prisons has increased more than five-fold in my lifetime, and I was born in the 80's. It just wasn't all that long ago that our prison population was relatively manageable and there's no real reason we can't return to that. Indeed, we may have no other choice.

Baltimore City residents share their experiences and hopes for the future

Advocates say new report is "a cautionary tale" for the nation's leaders

Contact: LaWanda Johnson
202-558-7974 x308
202-320-1029

BALTIMORE, MD--Teens spending their free time comforting parents who have lost their own children to violence; a woman fighting to break the cycle of addiction while fighting to keep her family together; a man struggling to keep his job while trying to comply with parole reporting requirements; a formerly incarcerated single mother making her daughter proud by getting her degree; and a woman grappling with the murder of her son and forgiving his assailant. These are some of the people who share their experiences in a new report, Bearing Witness: Baltimore City's residents give voice to what's needed to fix the criminal justice system, released today by the Justice Policy Institute.  In a brilliant blend of narratives and policy recommendations, Bearing Witness lays bare the facts around crime and punishment in Maryland's largest city, while shining a light on the hope and resiliency of those most affected by decades of failed policies. This report was supported by the Open Society Institute.

"Bearing Witness provides a glimpse not only of the impact the criminal justice system has had on communities, but also on the hope and determination of Baltimore City residents," said Shakti Belway, the author of the report.  "Each person's narrative demonstrates their perseverance in the face of incredible obstacles and their willingness to provide support and opportunity for others in similar circumstances."

Compared to the rest of Maryland, Baltimore City faces a concentrated impact of the criminal justice system. Although home to roughly 600,000 people, in 2006 the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center processed nearly 100,000 arrests and detained 44,825 individuals.  In 2008, 61 percent of newly-incarcerated people in Maryland prisons were from Baltimore City.  This intense involvement has taken its toll over the years on people, families, and neighborhoods.

"We felt that it was important for people most affected by the criminal justice system to have their voices heard, and a chance to talk about what they believe should be done to change the system for the better," said Tracy Velázquez, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute. "Their comments and conclusions underscore that more treatment, comprehensive services for families and individuals, and alternatives to incarceration--including those rooted in the principles of restorative justice--benefit people and their communities."

Bearing Witness, a collaborative effort of community members and organizations, not only documents Baltimore City's experiences, it also serves as a cautionary tale about the consequences of relying on the criminal justice system to solve social problems.The report identifies five areas that are critical to Baltimore City becoming a safer and healthier community:

• Women and families have unique needs.  When a woman is sent to prison, her entire family also feels the punishment.  Treatment, interventions, and wrap-around services should be designed with the needs of women and their families in mind. 
• Parole and probation serve as a revolving door that sends people back to prison.  The parole and probation system is too focused on catching people who are not meeting the conditions of release.  Instead, these systems should concentrate on ensuring that people get the support they need to stay out of prison.
• A public health approach to drug addiction would eliminate the practice of sending people to prison who, in reality, need treatment.  Community-based treatment options that include the family and are available on demand would make this approach a reality.
• Expanding opportunities and investing in solutions will preserve public safety and strengthen Baltimore City for years to come.  Rather than putting money into prisons and the criminal justice system, the community would benefit from stronger education and re-entry programs, job training, youth-oriented programs, and other community-based initiatives. 
• Restorative justice and community conferencing are effective and less costly alternatives to incarceration.  The criminal justice system, as it is currently designed, does not meet the complex needs of victims, the community or the people who caused harm.

For more information about Bearing Witness or to schedule an interview, contact Lawanda Johnson at (202) 558-7974 x308 or ljohnson@justicepolicy.org.
 

The Justice Policy Institute is a non-profit public policy and research institute dedicated to ending society's reliance on incarceration and promoting effective and just solutions to social problems. To learn more about our research and publications visit www.justicepolicy.org

The Cato Institute is hosting an online debate/discussion on incarceration, featuring posts from experts with diverse perspectives on the issue. I haven't had time to dig into it yet, but Pete Guither has posted some interesting excerpts and reactions.

American states spent about $52 billion on corrections last year, the vast majority of it on prisons, and that's not smart, the Pew Center on the States said in a report released Monday.

Just two weeks ago, the Congress passed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, which included $

The criminal justice system in California is rapidly approaching a breaking point:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A special panel of federal judges tentatively ruled Monday that California must release tens of thousands of inmates to relieve overcrowding.

The judges said no other solution will improve conditions so poor that inmates die regularly of suicides or lack of proper care.
…
"There are simply too many prisoners for the existing capacity," they wrote. "Evidence offered at trial was overwhelmingly to the effect that overcrowding is the primary cause of the unconstitutional conditions that have been found to exist in the California prisons." [AP]

Passing harsh laws, capturing offenders and convicting people of crimes is the easy part. What a lot of people don’t get is that the process doesn’t end there. You have to actually do something with the people you’ve decided to remove from society. Keeping massive populations behind bars for years at a time is phenomenally expensive, even if you do an appallingly poor job of it.

It’s utterly disgusting that our drug laws condemn these people to a living hell, all because drugs are supposedly bad for your physical and emotional health. The treatment of our prisoners is disgraceful and the legions of prison-state profiteers who lobby for more jails and tougher laws seldom receive the recognition they deserve in the hierarchy of scum-sucking subspecies destroying our society.

The prison industry will not stop. These people have already created an unbelievable mess and they will fight for more laws and funding no matter how much worse it gets. When human beings start getting sick and dying in our jails, someone outside the criminal justice industry has to intervene, otherwise nothing will be done about it. It shouldn’t even be necessary for judges to compel better prison conditions, but of course it is.

Fortunately, the one inevitable boundary that exists here is the fact that there is simply nothing left to spend on keeping more people in prison. The incarceration industry can’t print its own money. It’s a shame that we couldn’t stall the escalation of our massive prison population with appeals to logic and compassion, but if it takes bankruptcy to abate this then so be it.

For more than 35 years, New York state has had the dubious distinction of having some of the country's worst drug laws, the Rockefeller drug laws passed in 1973.

Washington Post has a whole story on Virginia Senator Jim Webb’s thoroughly awesome ideas about criminal justice reform:

This spring, Webb (D-Va.) plans to introduce legislation on a long-standing passion of his: reforming the U.S. prison system. Jails teem with young black men who later struggle to rejoin society, he says. Drug addicts and the mentally ill take up cells that would be better used for violent criminals. And politicians have failed to address this costly problem for fear of being labeled "soft on crime."
…
Webb aims much of his criticism at enforcement efforts that he says too often target low-level drug offenders and parole violators, rather than those who perpetrate violence, such as gang members. He also blames policies that strip felons of citizenship rights and can hinder their chances of finding a job after release. He says he believes society can be made safer while making the system more humane and cost-effective.

Sadly, one rarely hears a Washington lawmaker talk about our drug policy priorities in a way that makes any sense. So, fittingly, Washington Post dedicates plenty of space to the theory that Jim Webb’s gonna get massacred for his crazy blasphemous ideas:

"It is a gamble for Webb, a fiery and cerebral Democrat from a staunchly law-and-order state."

"…as the country struggles with two wars overseas and an ailing economy, overflowing prisons are the last thing on many lawmakers' minds."

"…Webb has never been one to rely on polls or political indicators to guide his way."

"Some say Webb's go-it-alone approach could come back to haunt him."

No, it won’t. Just watch as that completely fails to happen. Recent polls show that democrats and republicans agree the drug war has failed and that is just a fact. Too bad it’s fact that completely eluded The Post throughout a lengthy article about the politics of criminal justice reform. They found room to postulate endlessly about the supposedly disastrous political consequences of saying anything bad about our policies, but they couldn’t find a single line to show what the public actually believes.

Of course, to include actual relevant polling data would refute a central point of the article: that there’s something really mavericky and even reckless about Webb’s ideas. There isn’t. Those same ideas didn’t stop Obama from winning Virginia, so this whole political-suicide-by-drug-policy-reform narrative is garbage. Stop trying to recycle it. Just put it where it belongs.

The number of people in jail or prison in the United States hit another record at the end of last year, according to a report from the US Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics releas

The United States is infamous for its burgeoning prisons. Are we doing something wrong? What does this mean for our families? Our communities?

The number of women in U.S. prisons has increased 757% in the last 30 years — and the prison system does not have proper services to deal with the population.

If a comprehensive poll released last weekend is accurate -- and there is no reason to

Dennis Sobin's "Letter from Jail #1"

November 2008

Dear Friends,

Well, here I am back in jail. Again put here by my adult lawyer son and sister in an effort to silence me. The discord between us began in 2001 when my mother died. She was to leave a substantial part of her large fortune to the Prisons Foundation, a non-profit arts advocacy group which I had recently co-founded. The arraignment was to be handled by my attorney son with my sister's involvement and cooperation. A substantial share was also to go to each of them.In the end they got greedy and wanted it all; so they cut me and Prisons Foundation out.

Over the years I have tried to find answers as to how such a thing could happen. My mother and I were close. She, a retired union organizer and former public school principal, was very supportive of the then infant Prisons Foundation.
My son and sister reacted to my inquiries about the inheritance by getting repeated stay-away orders against me. This is the third time I've been charged with violating them. Previous stays in jail for such violations ranged from ten days to three months. This time the sentence has been harsher due to the influence and contacts my son and sister have.

Due to their money and ambition, they have both risen to positions of power over the years. My sister Judy Sobin is a regional director of the United Way in Salt Lake City. My son Dennis Sobin is a D.C. assistant Attorney General working at City Hall here in Washington.

The previous violation that my son had me prosecuted and jailed for was my attempt to resolve our differences by talking to his attorney. My sister put me in the slammer when I sent her an email on her birthday; sincerely wishing her happy returns and expressing hope that we could settle our "misunderstandings." I had forgotten that in Utah a stay-away order last three years, not one year as in Washington D.C.

Meanwhile, my son has his stay-away order against me renewed year after year. This year he really lowered the boom when he learned that I was to testify at City Hall on behalf of the Prisons Foundation. He charged me with three violations for going or attempting to go to City Hall to give such testimony. That's why I am in jail now. The judge agreed with my son that the stay-away order called for me to keep away from his "place of work," and that City Hall was just that. My fine lawyer James Butler's impassioned argument that Darrin's "place of work" was in fact an office in City Hall that I had scrupulously avoided, that I came and left without incident, and that I never saw my son or attempted to see him, fell on unresponsive ears.

The verdict of guilty on two counts hit me so badly both as a father and as a citizen that I collapsed, falling onto the defense table, and then taken to jail in an ambulance with a stop along the way at an area hospital that tested me and diagnosed me as having an anxiety attack. When I told my doctor and my nurses what had happened, they nearly fainted too.

Now I'm sitting on a bunk in my jail cell, wearing my orange jumpsuit and writing several "Sobin's Letter's from the Jail" communiqués. I was sentenced to six months in jail, a half year. Given my son and sister's influence, coupled with their strong motivation to bury me even before my death, I expected it to be more severe.
I will use my time to read and write books and work on my music. Of the two books I intend to write, one will be called Mentoring to Artists in Prison. It will be used in workshops to train mentors for imprisoned artists conducted by the Prisons Foundation (a program supported by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanity).

If you care to help me I can use some blank paper. Please send me some loose sheets (up to 50) and I'll share any excess with other inmates (my roommate Michael is 18 and likes to write too). Also, I would appreciate a book or two. Any books sent to this institution must be paperback and sent directly by a bookseller (like Amazon.com). My favorite reading is American history, novelized or not, and music; particularly biographies of composers and songwriters, sheet music and song collections.

I also ask that you support the Prison Art Gallery located at 1600 K Street NW, Suite 501, Washington, D.C. 20006. Telephone: 202-393-1511. It's currently being most ably run by Donovan Berry, Kevin Horrocks, Anita Winston and Jahi Foster-Bey. Except for Anita, the entire staff has all been to prison, and Anita is on her way there (to visit her son). Thank you deeply for your support.

Yours for Justice,

Dennis Sobin
#206757
Central Detention Facility
1901 D Street S.E.
Washington, D.C.
20003

*Note the views in this letter are those of the author alone. Please send your comments directly to him.

The political landscape in Washington, DC, is undergoing a dramatic shift as the Democratic tide rolls in, and, after eight years of drug war status quo under the Republicans, drug reformers are no

Thanks to a grant we received from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Prisons Foundation throughout the year has been conducting free all-day workshops for individuals who wish to become a mentor to imprisoned artists. We are now having our last workshop--a wrap up one that's just half a day long--and invite all to attend, whether or not you have been to a previous workshop. This summary workshop will feature the highlights of previous workshops. The workshop is free and refreshments will be served. It is ideal for anyone who attended any of the previous workshops as well as for new participants who seek to work either as a volunteer or paid staff member in a jail or prison.

Attend this free workshop on Saturday, September 27, 1 to 5 pm. You'll learn what it takes to work in a jail or prison to foster artistic development among inmates. You'll receive this valuable training from experienced correctional officials (from both public and private jails) who have made presentations at our previous seminars. The highlights of their presentations will be show on video. You will also benefit from the insights and knowledge of ex-prisoner artists who will serve as workshop leaders. These knowledgeable people will share their experiences with you in a relaxed and fun setting at the Prison Art Gallery in downtown Washington, DC.

This is a rare opportunity to make contacts and obtain valuable information. You can be part of it all. Whether you're looking for a one afternoon per month volunteer opportunity or a full-time paid career position, you will find this workshop very worthwhile.

Please call us at 202-393-1511 or email staff@PrisonsFoundation.org to reserve your spot or for more information. Thank you.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, September 15, 2008
Contact: LaWanda Johnson, (202) 558-7974x308; cell:(202) 320-1029

Violent Crime Fell in 2007; Areas with lower incarceration rates experienced greater crime reductions

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Violent crime in the United States fell by 1.4 percent in 2007, according to an analysis released today by the Justice Policy Institute. The analysis, which is based on findings in the 2007 FBI Uniform Crime Report released today, finds that the drop in crime came at a time when the prison and jail growth rates fell from previous years. The analysis concluded that regions with the lowest incarceration rates also experienced the largest drops in violent crime.

The number of violent and property crimes fell in three of the four regions of the country. The northeast region experienced the greatest drop in violent crime, and also has the lowest incarceration rates in the country. The southern region has the highest incarceration rates and witnessed a rise in violent crimes--the only part of the country to not experience a drop in crime. Furthermore, as the growth rates of prisons and jails fell, the violent crime rate fell as well, possibly indicating that lowering the number of people imprisoned can be an effective way to increase public safety.

"The data clearly demonstrates that the use of incarceration as a means of increasing public safety is a failed public policy," said Sheila Bedi, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute. "This data underscores that investments in education, employment and housing are what make communities safer."

The Uniform Crime Report also reinforces statistics around youth crime and suggests that punitive practices aimed at youth should be abandoned for more effective alternatives. According the UCR, adults are responsible for the majority of violent offenses, representing 84 percent of all violent crime arrests.

For a more in-depth analysis of crime trends, and information on effective public safety practices, please visit our website at www.justicepolicy.org.

Featuring journalist and author of "Women Behind Bars" Silja Talvi, founding editor of "Prison Legal News" Paul Wright, former drug war prisoner Yraida Guanipa, and Books Through Bars co-founder and a

Join us for a pre-Kennedy Center Show Preview at the Prison Art Gallery in Washington, DC to benefit the legal defense fund of our director Dennis Sobin (arrested for going to City Hall to speak at a

The Justice Policy Institute is a Washington, DC-based research, policy and communications advocacy organization whose mission is to end society's reliance on incarceration, and to promote effectiv

Drug war defenders are indeed fond of pointing out how hard it is to actually get jail time for using drugs. So they should probably stop New Orleans District Attorney Keva Landrum-Johnson before she finishes filling Louisiana's prisons with the pettiest marijuana users she can find:

The flood of new felony charges didn’t target murderers, rapists or armed robbers — they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy prison sentences.

The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and damaged low-income African-American communities, [Orleans Public Defenders Office Chief of Trials Steve] Singer said.
…

A first-time marijuana possession charge in Louisiana is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison but typically results in a small fine. A second offense is a felony that can carry up to five years in jail and a third offense up to 20 years.
…

Some say Landrum-Johnson’s decision to buck history and charge marijuana users with felonies is a political decision meant to assist in her run for Orleans Criminal District Court Section E judgeship. By prosecuting thousands of marijuana possession cases as felonies, Landrum-Johnson can then go to the voters of New Orleans and claim she is “tough on crime,” [Tulane University criminologist Peter] Scharf said. She can point to the massive increase in felony prosecutions under her tenure without explaining that those prosecutions were for people holding joints and not guns, he said. [New Orleans CityBusiness]

Only Landrum-Johnson knows what her motivations are, so I won't belabor that point. She is presiding over a deliberate effort to place large numbers of small-time marijuana users in prison for 5-20 years and there exists no noble motive for doing that. Whether she believes this can help her become a judge, or she possesses a virulent and vindictive animosity towards people who smoke marijuana, or she is merely detached utterly from the consequences of the authority she wields, the result is disastrous and the justification is a fraud.

This, I'm afraid to say, is the reality of America's war on drugs. Everyday our drug policies produce outcomes none of us intended and almost none of us support. The idea of imprisoning nonviolent drug users is so obviously unpopular that the DEA has a whole page arguing that it almost never happens. But will anyone in Washington, D.C. approach the New Orleans DA's office and tell them to stop? Of course not. The very people who so vigorously argue the scarcity of such injustices are the same ones who work tirelessly to conceal them and enable their continuation.