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November 28, 2009
EDITORIAL
When Prisoners Phone Home
New York State’s highest court has rejected the last vestiges of a
lawsuit by families of inmates who claimed that the prison system
overcharged them for telephone calls from their loved ones. The good
news is that this suit — and an accompanying lobbying effort — has
already succeeded in reforming a terribly unfair system.
New York, like many states, used the phones in its prisons as a
profit center. MCI, which provided the phone service, agreed to pay
the prison system 57.5 percent of the fees it charged for prisoners’
collect calls. The state then allowed MCI to charge outrageously high
rates: 16 cents or more a minute plus a $3 surcharge for every call.
Families paid as much as $300 to $400 a month, according to one
advocacy group.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, a public interest legal
organization, and prisoners’ families sued in 2004, charging that the
exorbitant rates were unconstitutional. The suit rightly embarrassed
New York politicians. In January 2007, Eliot Spitzer, the state’s
newly elected governor, announced that rates would be substantially
lowered. The Legislature later made it illegal for the Department of
Correctional Services to accept revenue in excess of its reasonable
costs for operating an inmate phone system.
What was left for the New York State Court of Appeals to decide was
whether family members were due refunds. They contended that the
excessive fees were an illegal tax that violated inmates’ equal
protection rights. This week, the court, by a 5-to-1 vote, rejected
the suit.
The decision is regrettable. But even the majority noted that the
plaintiffs had strong arguments that the high rates were bad policy
because they made it difficult for inmates to maintain family and
community ties, and that released prisoners who lack these ties are
more likely to return to a life of crime.
That is a message other states should heed. Prison systems may not
have to subsidize these calls, but they should not be using them to
balance their budgets. When prisoners cannot afford to keep in touch
with their wives, husbands, parents and children, everyone pays.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/opinion/ 28sat4.html?
partner=rss&emc=rss
Nov. 23, 2009 | Julie Small | KPCC
The state Inspector General’s Office will soon issue a report on the quality of prison medical care in California. It’ll include a summary of inspections at 11 state prisons. The report will help a federal judge determine when to return control of prison medical care to the state. KPCC’s Julie Small has looked over some of the preliminary scores.
A federal judge took over California prison medical care nearly five years ago in a case called Plata v. Schwarzenegger. The court determined an inmate a week died because the care was so poor.
Since then, a court-appointed federal receiver has tried to improve that care. Chief Assistant Inspector General Jerry Twomey monitors the progress.
"Part of this is not just a medical review for the sake of having a medical review," Twomey says. "It’s a medical review to answer the question that the legal decision in Plata said, 'Your medical care is deficient in very specific areas in very specific ways.'”
Twomey and his inspection team grade 150 areas of prison medical care – from how a prison treats inmates with asthma, hepatitis, or other chronic conditions to how well a prison’s medical staff is trained and supervised. The top score is 100 percent.
Of 11 prisons inspected so far, the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla scored the highest at 77.9-percent. The California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi scored the lowest at 64.3.
Jerry Twomey won’t put a value to those numbers. He says that’s the federal court’s job.
"Our role in this was not to say what’s an OK number. Our role was to tell people what the number is based on, the criteria we all agreed on to evaluate the medical care against. So what does a 56 mean? I’m not sure I can tell you. I can tell you 56 is not as good as 80 and better than 20, right?"
Attorney Steve Fama with the Prison Law Office is willing to interpret some of numbers. They’re found in the sub-scores that make up the aggregate score.
"Some of those scores – and it’s almost universal across all the prisons so far looked at – are horrible!" Fama exclaims.
Fama points to Pleasant Valley State Prison. For getting medication to chronically ill inmates, Pleasant Valley got a 4 percent score.
The prisons inspected so far scored less than 75 percent compliance in four priority areas: treatment of chronic illness; access to primary care; how well a prison assesses the health of newly-arrived inmates; and an inmate’s ability to see to a specialist. For that last one, all the prisons scored less than 75 percent.
The Inspector General’s Jerry Twomey says a low score in specialty raises the question of "are inmates, are patients, getting consults that they might need?"
Twomey says if an institution scores 42 percent, "then they’re not getting sent out as appropriately as they should be."
Twomey’s talking about the 42 percent score on specialty care his inspectors gave to the Central Medical Facility in Vacaville.
The Central Medical Facility houses chronically ill, infirm, and elderly inmates. It got that 42 percent score for specialty care – but in other key aspects of inmate care, the Central Medical Facility got 80 percent scores.
On a recent tour, chief medical officer Dr. Joseph Bick showed off a gleaming clinic, a gym where inmates with disabilities can exercise, and a hospice for end of life care. Dr. Bick says for the medical care it controls, the prison scores well.
"When a patient asks for services in here – did we get a nurse over to evaluate them? Did we assign them an appropriate level of need? Did we get them in to see their provider? Did we document it in the medical record?"
Dr. Bick says the Central Medical Facility’s low scores were for care it can't control, like specialty care. That’s when inmates need to see outside the prison. Dr. Bick says the reason it’s hard to line up those doctors is "Because as a clinician, I can identify a need to see a certain sub-specialist, but I don’t have the ability independently to initiate a contract with a provider who’s willing to see our patients at whatever rates the department is willing to pay them."
The Department of Corrections sets the pay rate for outside doctors. But some doctors won’t take prison cases because the pay’s too low. That delays specialized care – and Dr. Bick’s prison medical report card takes a hit.
The Inspector General’s Jerry Twomey says the point of scoring medical care is to identify areas that need improvement. Twomey says it’s really up to the federal receiver and the Department of Corrections to act on those low scores.
"To then take that number and say what didn’t we do, why did we get non-compliance, no responses, and then what do we need to do going forward so that we are compliant with those areas?"
The Inspector General’s Office plans to inspect the rest of California’s prisons and issue a final report on the findings by next summer.
http://www.scpr.org/news/2009/11/23/prison-inspect/
New Jails, No Treatment, in California Prison Plan
Posted November 18, 2009
By Bernice Yeung
With his first proposal rejected by a federal court, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week submitted a new, 130-page plan to cut California prisons' inmate population by 42,000 in two years.
The proposal (PDF) would build new prisons and transfer inmates out of state, but comes amid a hefty budgetary slash to drug treatment programs that lawmakers had previously identified as an effective way of in keeping people out of prison.
Indeed, rehabilitation -- treatment, counseling or education programs -- does not figure into the new prison plan. It adopts similar strategies outlined in the document that Schwarzenegger filed with the courts in September -- including house arrest for elderly and ill inmates, transferring inmates out of state, and building new prisons.
The plan would waive environmental laws to expedite prison construction, and forgo restrictions on transferring inmates with serious medical and mental health problems to out-of-state prisons.
As mandated by the court, the state also included comments on the effects of $250 million in state cuts to adult rehabilitation programs -- a 40 percent reduction in the overall rehabilitation and treatment budget.
The cuts could have an "adverse impact" on some health services for prisoners, and would also target 5,000 slots in the state's substance-abuse programs for parolees.
The new plan does not mention that cuts to rehab will mean that drug treatment will close outright at eight prisons, and scaled-down versions will continue operating at 12 of its 33 prisons, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
Cuts have already forced the shuttering of a substance abuse program at Donovan State Prison that's hailed for cutting recidivism from 71 to 21 percent.
Two years ago, an independent review of California's prison system commissioned by state legislators found that rehab programs could eliminate 48,000 prison beds, saving taxpayers $561 million to $684 million per year.
Schwarzenegger has championed rehabilitation in the past. He was responsible for changing the name of the state's corrections department to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation four years ago and in 2007, he told reporters that when it comes to rehabilitation services for prisoners, "We have to heal them. We have to get them ready to go out so they can get a job, connect with society and never commit a crime again."
Schwarzenegger continues to challenge the legality of the federal court's August 2009 order mandating California's prison population reduction. The case is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
http://www.newsdesk.org/archives/006061.html
