Prison Treatment Cuts Could Feed Recidivism in Calif.

Prison Treatment Cuts Could Feed Recidivism in Calif.

An 80-percent reduction in prison addiction-treatment capacity could lead to a proportional increase in recidivism in California, some experts say.

The Contra Costa Times reported Nov. 12 that $1.2 billion in budget cuts for state prisons will mean that just 2,350 inmates will receive addiction treatment next year, down from 12,164. Nine-month programs will be cut to three months, which critics say could limit their effectiveness.

"Those inmates will have very little treatment service to deal with behavioral issues that they've spent years to develop, most of which was put on them from an early age," said Darrol Monfils, a counselor at the California Institution for Women. "Their chances of succeeding are slim."

"California prisoners will be paroling inmates with little or no rehabilitation," Monfils said. "They will be paroling with the same behaviors as they did when they arrived. Now, having said that, there will be a few exceptions to the rule, but they will be the larger minority."

A state corrections department spokesperson said the agency is "scientifically evaluating and assessing inmates, those at the highest risk of recidivism and so we are targeting our resources to that population group and identifying what their needs are."

David Conn, senior vice president for treatment provider Mental Health Systems, Inc., said the state made the cuts only reluctantly. "These were sort of last-minute budget cuts to balance the budget, and everyone agrees it's probably a foolish decision," he said. "Individuals who are incarcerated to support drug habits will not receive substance abuse treatment. The likelihood of them reoffending increases significantly."

Congress Introduces Justice Reinvestment Act of 2009

Congress Introduces Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act of 2009

Congress Introduces Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act of 2009
This week, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Representative Adam Schiff introduced the Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act of 2009. The bill is numbered S 2772 for the Senate and HR 4080 for the House. The complete text of the legislation can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov.

The Criminal Justice Reinvestment Act of 2009 authorizes the U.S Attorney General to make grants to incentivize state and local governments and tribes to:
(1) analyze criminal justice trends to better understand what is driving the growth in their local jail and prison populations;
(2) develop tailored policy options to reduce prison spending, better manage the growth of the prison population, reduce recidivism and reinvest a portion of savings in strategies designed to increase public safety and improve conditions in neighborhoods to which most people return after prison;
(3) implement the proposed policies.
Justice reinvestment seeks to improve public safety more cost effectively through reforms of parole and probation policies and practices that downsize state prison populations and budgets. The money saved by these initiatives is then reinvested to improve community corrections and to strengthen community institutions - schools, job creation, affordable housing and health care - in the neighborhoods where people live before and after prison.
The idea was pioneered by Susan Tucker, Director of The After Prison Initiative at the Open Society Institute, and Eric Cadora, a former OSI Program Officer who now directs the Justice Mapping Center.
With support from the Open Society Institute, the Council on State Governments has developed justice reinvestment intiatives in 11 states.
More information can be found at www.justicereinvestment.org.

Experts Discuss Legalization To Reduce Crime

Infozine
By Greg Flakus - Drug smuggling gangs in Mexico have turned some parts of that country into a war zone. At the same time, arrests for drug offenses in the United States have soared, contributing to a jail population that is the highest in the industrialized world. Experts on the narcotics issue came together for a discussion of legalization and other ideas at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston Thursday.
Houston, TX - infoZine - The question before the panel was whether legalization of cannabis, commonly known as marijuana, would help reduce the power of the violent Mexican crime cartels. But the discussion also included the idea of legalizing other narcotics or changing the legal approach to the problem they pose.

Speaking in favor of legalization was Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance."I think the notion of taking certain psychoactive substances, certain plants and chemicals and treating those as criminal and treating anybody who touches them or uses them, consumes or sells or buys or grows them as criminal is basically wrong. It is wrong and especially for people whose only offense is to take those things into their body," he said.

Nadelmann argued that the so-called war on drugs being carried out by the US government is not really a war at all, but an ill-advised attempt to control behavior that has existed in human society for thousands of years. He says criminalization of drugs has put hundreds of thousands of otherwise lawful citizens in prison and provided criminal gangs with large profits.

But the Intelligence Chief for the Houston office of the Drug Enforcement Administration, or DEA, Gary Hale said efforts to stop drug trafficking do amount to a war. "To me, it is a drug war. It is a conflict that is marked by death and, certainly, threats to our national security. A significant number of terrorist organizations partially fund their activities with drug proceeds," he said.

Hale noted that leftist guerrillas in Colombia are largely funded by taxes they impose on cocaine growers and that the Taliban in Afghanistan benefits from opium production there.

Hale stressed that his job is to enforce the laws, not to make them, but he challenged the idea that legalization of marijuana or any other drug would have a great impact on Mexican criminal gangs like the Zetas, who operate along the US-Mexico border. "If you look at their revenue sources, which are drugs and prostitution and alcohol sales and petroleum theft and just a whole range of stuff the Zetas are involved in, drugs is a very small part, 15 to 20 percent," he said.

Prison Overcrowding: $700 Million Is Too Much

The Gazettehttp://www.gazette.com/articles/possession-89650-bills-misdemeanor.html
Colorado prisons are overflowing with inmates, at a cost of nearly $700 million a year to taxpayers, in part due to mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, a panel of state lawmakers and sentence reform advocates said at a town hall meeting Saturday.
To ease the pressure on the state prison system, the 2010 General Assembly will be asked to pass a package of bills that would give judges discretion at sentencing to let some of those convicts out sooner.
The sentencing reform package also will include bills reducing penalties for possession of marijuana and other drugs. For example, possession of 4 ounces of marijuana would become a petty offense instead of a criminal misdemeanor. Possession of 8 to 16 ounces would be a misdemeanor under the bills, instead of a felony.
Similar reductions would apply to possession of small amounts of cocaine and methamphetamine and various prescription drugs, with the exception of “date-rape” drugs.
The package also will address DUI sentencing laws, perhaps raising penalties for habitual DUI convictions, said Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition.

California cop urges Colorado to sort out its medical-marijuana laws - The Denver Post

California cop urges Colorado to sort out its medical-marijuana laws - The Denver Post

The top cop in a California town that has become a poster child for a well-intentioned medical-marijuana law gone wrong has some advice for Colorado legislators.

"Make your laws as clear as you can, so that your executive and judicial branches of government can do their jobs as they are intended to," said Randy Mendosa, chief of police in Arcata, Calif.

The northern California town of 17,000 drew national attention in 2008 when a boom in medical-marijuana growing spawned serious public-safety concerns and siphoned away affordable housing as homes were rented for pot cultivation operations.

Colorado has its work cut out for it.

The state has few regulations for the burgeoning medical-marijuana industry, which has forced befuddled municipalities to enact a patchwork of moratoriums and outright bans as they wait for lawmakers to take up the issue in January.

Limon prison is doing some time in "Lockup" - The Denver Post

Limon prison is doing some time in "Lockup" - The Denver Post

Quillen: Colorado's Medical Marijuana Maze

The Denver Post
It came as something of a surprise to read that Breckenridge residents had overwhelmingly voted on Nov. 3 to legalize the possession of one ounce or less of marijuana, as well as associated paraphernalia.
It was a surprise because I used to work there for a few months in 1977-78, when I edited the Summit County Journal. Back then, you would have had to work at it to find that marijuana was illegal.
The only pot arrests I recall were "stupidity busts." Someone forgot to remove the plants from a condo's window sill before calling to report a burglary, or left a bag in plain sight on the front seat when pulled over. Indeed, I distinctly remember two guys passing a joint in broad daylight while they changed a flat tire right outside the sheriff's office window.
But even if a municipality can set priorities for law enforcement (Denver voters made it the "lowest priority" in 2005), a town can't actually legalize marijuana, since the plant also comes under state and federal law. Colorado voters legalized medical marijuana with Amendment 20 in 2000, but that had little effect until recently.
Although the Bush administration offered lip service to federalism and respecting states, Bush told federal drug agents to ignore tolerant state marijuana laws. Thus a pot dispensary that was legal under California or Colorado law was still a target for the federal DEA.
That has changed. President Barack Obama has told federal agents to ignore cannabis operations that are legal under state law, and thus the recent growth in Colorado dispensaries.

KUNC: Hudson Correctional Facility Opens in Colorado (2009-11-18)

KUNC: Hudson Correctional Facility Opens in Colorado (2009-11-18)
GREELEY, CO (KUNC) - Earlier this week federal officials toured an Illinois prison as a possible site to house Guantanamo Bay detainees. So far Colorado has not been contacted by the federal government for the project. But a recent medium-security private prison opening in Hudson yesterday could provide a glimpse of what could be gained by such a project.

The new Hudson Correctional Facility is a welcome economic boost for the town's 1,600 residents.

"The answer was pretty loud and clear," says Hudson Town Administrator Joe Racine, who says voters overwhelmingly approved zoning for the prison in 2007. "It passed 2:1."

Right now Hudson is a sleepy commuter town just off I-76, east of Fort Lupton. But officials like Racine expect this to change because of the $90 million dollar correctional facility.

"The biggest single tax revenue item from the prison will be property tax and that exact amount won't be known until we get the assessor's evaluation on the facility," says Racine.

Houston-based Cornell Companies Inc. brought in millions of dollars to fund a new wastewater treatment facility. They also paved several roads around the prison, opening the door for new development.

"It's a significant injection into southern Weld County into an area that hasn't seen a lot of growth," say Charles Seigel, spokesman for Cornell.

Seigel estimates the 1,250-bed prison will pump more than $7 million in salaries to the area annually. But national studies have shown that workers choose to commute to work when prisons are located in rural communities, which could reduce the economic impact on Hudson. Joe Racine says there will be a pay off for his town, though.

"The I-76 corridor like the I-25 corridor before us will see significant growth," he says. "We've already seen significant growth just down the road in Brighton."

That growth will first come in the form of prisoners, and they won't be from Colorado. Department of Corrections officials cite Governor Ritter's recidivism package and the economy for a slow down in the prison population. Cornell says the first 800 inmates to arrive in Hudson will come from Alaska. More are likely from around the country in the years ahead.

Sentencing laws and prison costs - The Denver Post

Sentencing laws and prison costs - The Denver Post
Lowering penalties for marijuana possession and ramping up punishments for repeat drunken drivers are both promising ideas that ought to be considered as part of state sentencing reform.

We're glad to see the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice pursuing these changes. But before the ideas get too far along, it will be important to get a handle on the economic impact of such a restructuring.

Would the overhaul result in overflowing jails? Will counties have the resources to accommodate changes? Is there any way to realize some savings in prison expenses?

Prison cost reduction is one of the main reasons the commission was formed. As corrections eats up an increasing portion of the state's general fund, it is imperative to figure out a way to slow the growth.
The commission is set to finish its work by the end of December, and then it will forward suggestions to the governor. Ultimately, restructuring sentencing laws will fall to legislators, who convene in January.
State lawmakers need to quickly get their arms around the financial implications of sentencing reform because anything with a significant price tag is going to be a waste of their time given the budget situation. Ideally, they'd realize savings.

The last sentencing reform bill, introduced in the waning days of the last legislative session, was shelved in part because no one knew how it would affect the budget.

The measure, sponsored by state Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, and Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, offered some good ideas with its reduction in sentencing ranges for non-violent, property and some drug crimes.

It seems like the commission, which most recently met last week, is considering some of the same directions.
Commission members voted to recommend dialing back penalties for marijuana possession. Those caught with up to 4 ounces of marijuana would face a petty offense instead of a criminal misdemeanor. Possession of 8 to 16 ounces would become a misdemeanor instead of a felony.

Those changes are in keeping with trends around the state as voters have been taking a more lenient view about marijuana use.

AG Suthers says Colorado can tax medical marijuana - The Denver Post

AG Suthers says Colorado can tax medical marijuana - The Denver Post