Craigslist iPhone purchaser instead robbed at gunpoint. Two arrested.
The planned purchase of an iPhone instead ended with a Lawndale man being robbed at gunpoint at a planned meeting in Temple City
A Lawndale man (victim) met with an Asian man (suspect) at a restaurant parking lot in the 9400 Block of Las Tunas in Temple City, February 19, at about 3:00PM.
The men had agreed to meet after the victim answered an advertisement for an iPhone for sale for $500.00 on Craiglist.
Instead of selling the victim the iPhone, the suspect pointed a handgun at the victim and demanded that he hand over all his money. Fearing for his life, the victim gave the suspect the $500 in cash, which he had brought with him to pay for the iPhone. The victim then turned and ran for his life. The victim was not injured.
Investigators from the Asian Gang Team, Operation Safe Streets, of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, conducted the investigation, assisted by deputies with Temple Sheriff's Station.
The investigation led to the identification of the suspect as Daniel So, 19.
On Friday evening, February 25, 2011, deputies from the Sheriff's Asian Gang Team staked out the suspect’s South Pasadena home. They saw the suspect enter a vehicle with a White male and drive away from the residence. Deputies conducted a traffic stop of the vehicle and arrested So for the robbery.
The vehicle they were in belonged to the White male, identified as Suspect Garrett Helstrom, 20, of South Pasadena.
Inside the vehicle, deputies found an exact replica of a semi-automatic handgun and suspected stolen property.
Helstrom was arrested for allegedly aiding So with the robbery.
Both So and Helstrom are being held under $100,000 bail each at Temple Sheriff’s station.
Investigators believe that So and Helstrom may have committed similar robberies in the San Gabriel Valley area. If you were a victim of this type of robbery, please contact sheriff's investigators or your local law enforcement authorities and report it.
Partner to prevent or report crime by contacting your local Sheriff’s station. Or if you wish to remain Anonymous, call “LA Crime Stoppers” by dialing 800-222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org
Safety considerations:
People usually purchase or sell possessions without anything going wrong. However, criminals will use a variety of means to steal or do others harm. By following good safety precautions, you can reduce the chance that you will have your property stolen, and even more importantly, that you avoid harm.
When meeting someone for the first time, including to make a purchase or to sell something, please remember:
* Your personal safety is your priority
* Legitimate buyers and sellers will be as concerned about their personal safety as you are about yours.
* Insist on a public meeting place like a cafe. Do not meet in a secluded place, and never invite strangers into your home.
* Highly populated and well traveled areas are usually safer
* Be especially careful when buying/selling high value items
* Tell a friend or family member where you are going and with whom exactly you are meeting
* Consider having a friend accompany you
* Take your cell phone along
* Trust your instincts. Leave if someone or something looks suspicious, especially if you arrive at the location and there is no vehicle visible.
* It is better that you feel impolite and drive away, than to risk your safety.
* If you are robbed, give the suspects the property they are asking for; your life and personal safety is more valuable than your property.
* Your personal safety is your priority
Sergeant Steve Kim
Asian Gang Team
Operation Safe Streets Bureau
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
(310) 603-3100
www.lasd.org
Captain Mike Parker
Sheriff’s Headquarters Bureau – Newsroom
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
(323) 267-4800
SHBNewsroom@lasd.org
www.lasd.org
Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Telephone Scam being used by Inmates
Telephone Scam being used by Inmates and others - Don't fall for this (*72)
Members of the public are being tricked by jail inmates and others through a telephone scam.
The increasing pattern was noticed by deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, who have been receiving an increasing number of phone calls from people who have been scammed.
Members of the public have been calling the Sheriff's Department and asking to talk to a specific deputy, detective, or sergeant who had just called them. The real deputy who answers the phone explains they are mistaken, as the named deputy does not exist or is not on duty.
The scam begins by the victim caller receiving a call from a person claiming to be a deputy. This imposter tells the victim that one of their family member's has been incarcerated or involved in an accident. The imposter then informs the victim caller that their family member provided the victim caller's name as an emergency contact.
The victim caller is then instructed to call a number that begins with *72 (Example: *72-323-555-1212) to get the information they will need. When the victim caller hangs up and dials the number provided, they are told they have a wrong number.
Concerned for the safety of their family member, the victim caller then calls an information line (4-1-1) and asks for a number to the Sheriff's Department. They are then connected with a real deputy.
However, since the victim caller used the prefix *72 to initiate their last phone call, they have just automatically forwarded all their incoming calls to the scammer's phone number (These include collect calls from inmates who want to avoid paying for collect calls). The billing for these forwarded calls goes to the victim caller until they turn off call forwarding on their phone (usually by dialing *73).
If not careful, Victims can be scammed out of a lot of money in collect-call fees before they find this out.
Do Not Dial *72 unless you want to forward your calls.
If you have been involved in this scam, and you have already dialed a number beginning with *72, contact your phone service provider to learn how to shut off automatic call forwarding.
For more information regarding this scam, please read the below alert from the California Public Utilities Commission for further details, recommendations and recourse.
Deputy Mark Pope
Deputy Robert Boese III
Captain Mike Parker
Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau - Newsroom
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
(323) 267- 4800
SHBNewsroom@lasd.org
www.lasd.org
Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
***
*72 Phone Scam - CONSUMER ADVISORY
Consumers should be aware of a phone scam that can leave you with high phone bills. It starts when scammers call you pretending to be with the police or sheriff's department, public safety agencies, or hospitals. They may make up a story about your child or other loved one being hurt in an accident. They then tell you to call the officer at the scene of the accident by dialing *72 and a phone number they provide you.
DO NOT DO THIS!
By dialing *72 at the beginning of a call, you will activate call forwarding, if you subscribe to it, and all calls to your phone number will be forwarded to the phone number that the scammers gave you.
When that happens, you may be billed a charge each time a call is forwarded to the other number. You may also be billed long distance charges, including collect call charges if applicable. Calls will continue to forward until you turn off the call forwarding feature. In some cases *73 turns off call forwarding, but that may vary depending on which phone company and the type of call forwarding service you subscribe to.
By getting you to activate your call forwarding feature and providing you with a number (it could be to an expensive pay-per-call service, the East Coast, etc.), the scammers can then call that number by dialing your phone number and you will be billed the additional charges. Don’t let this happen to you!
You may have call forwarding as a feature of your landline or wireless service. If you are unsure if you have it, ask your phone company. Also not all call forwarding is activated by *72. If you have call forwarding, find out how to use it, as well as all your other services.
If this does happen to you, call your phone company to dispute the charges and report it to the California Public Utilities Commission’s consumer hotline at 800-649-7570.
CONSUMER ADVISORY
California Public Utilities Commission Consumer Hotline
(800) 649-7570
ftp://ftp.cpuc.ca.gov/cei/advisories/72%20Scam%20final.pdf
http://www.calphoneinfo.com/
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/Telco/Consumer+Information/081022_72advisory.htm
Partner to prevent or report crime by contacting your local Sheriff’s station. Or if you wish to remain Anonymous, call “LA Crime Stoppers” by dialing 800-222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org
To receive more detailed, up-to-date information directly from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) via e-mail, register for "Nixle" alerts at www.Nixle.com or more directly at https://local.nixle.com/register/ and register for "LASD – Headquarters Newsroom (SHB), Los Angeles County Sheriff" and your local LASD station area. Or, text your zip code to 888777 to receive text alerts only. Standard text messaging rates may apply depending on your calling plan.
For full details, go to https://local.nixle.com/alert/4659930/?sub_id=250566.
Contact Information:
Robert Boese III
Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau
Members of the public are being tricked by jail inmates and others through a telephone scam.
The increasing pattern was noticed by deputies with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, who have been receiving an increasing number of phone calls from people who have been scammed.
Members of the public have been calling the Sheriff's Department and asking to talk to a specific deputy, detective, or sergeant who had just called them. The real deputy who answers the phone explains they are mistaken, as the named deputy does not exist or is not on duty.
The scam begins by the victim caller receiving a call from a person claiming to be a deputy. This imposter tells the victim that one of their family member's has been incarcerated or involved in an accident. The imposter then informs the victim caller that their family member provided the victim caller's name as an emergency contact.
The victim caller is then instructed to call a number that begins with *72 (Example: *72-323-555-1212) to get the information they will need. When the victim caller hangs up and dials the number provided, they are told they have a wrong number.
Concerned for the safety of their family member, the victim caller then calls an information line (4-1-1) and asks for a number to the Sheriff's Department. They are then connected with a real deputy.
However, since the victim caller used the prefix *72 to initiate their last phone call, they have just automatically forwarded all their incoming calls to the scammer's phone number (These include collect calls from inmates who want to avoid paying for collect calls). The billing for these forwarded calls goes to the victim caller until they turn off call forwarding on their phone (usually by dialing *73).
If not careful, Victims can be scammed out of a lot of money in collect-call fees before they find this out.
Do Not Dial *72 unless you want to forward your calls.
If you have been involved in this scam, and you have already dialed a number beginning with *72, contact your phone service provider to learn how to shut off automatic call forwarding.
For more information regarding this scam, please read the below alert from the California Public Utilities Commission for further details, recommendations and recourse.
Deputy Mark Pope
Deputy Robert Boese III
Captain Mike Parker
Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau - Newsroom
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
(323) 267- 4800
SHBNewsroom@lasd.org
www.lasd.org
Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
***
*72 Phone Scam - CONSUMER ADVISORY
Consumers should be aware of a phone scam that can leave you with high phone bills. It starts when scammers call you pretending to be with the police or sheriff's department, public safety agencies, or hospitals. They may make up a story about your child or other loved one being hurt in an accident. They then tell you to call the officer at the scene of the accident by dialing *72 and a phone number they provide you.
DO NOT DO THIS!
By dialing *72 at the beginning of a call, you will activate call forwarding, if you subscribe to it, and all calls to your phone number will be forwarded to the phone number that the scammers gave you.
When that happens, you may be billed a charge each time a call is forwarded to the other number. You may also be billed long distance charges, including collect call charges if applicable. Calls will continue to forward until you turn off the call forwarding feature. In some cases *73 turns off call forwarding, but that may vary depending on which phone company and the type of call forwarding service you subscribe to.
By getting you to activate your call forwarding feature and providing you with a number (it could be to an expensive pay-per-call service, the East Coast, etc.), the scammers can then call that number by dialing your phone number and you will be billed the additional charges. Don’t let this happen to you!
You may have call forwarding as a feature of your landline or wireless service. If you are unsure if you have it, ask your phone company. Also not all call forwarding is activated by *72. If you have call forwarding, find out how to use it, as well as all your other services.
If this does happen to you, call your phone company to dispute the charges and report it to the California Public Utilities Commission’s consumer hotline at 800-649-7570.
CONSUMER ADVISORY
California Public Utilities Commission Consumer Hotline
(800) 649-7570
ftp://ftp.cpuc.ca.gov/cei/advisories/72%20Scam%20final.pdf
http://www.calphoneinfo.com/
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/Telco/Consumer+Information/081022_72advisory.htm
Partner to prevent or report crime by contacting your local Sheriff’s station. Or if you wish to remain Anonymous, call “LA Crime Stoppers” by dialing 800-222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org
To receive more detailed, up-to-date information directly from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) via e-mail, register for "Nixle" alerts at www.Nixle.com or more directly at https://local.nixle.com/register/ and register for "LASD – Headquarters Newsroom (SHB), Los Angeles County Sheriff" and your local LASD station area. Or, text your zip code to 888777 to receive text alerts only. Standard text messaging rates may apply depending on your calling plan.
For full details, go to https://local.nixle.com/alert/4659930/?sub_id=250566.
Contact Information:
Robert Boese III
Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Low Recidivism Rate Reported For Paroled NY Murderers
Low Recidivism Rate Reported For Paroled NY Murderers
Of 368 convicted murderers granted parole in New York between 1999 and 2003, six, or 1.6 percent,were returned to prison within three years for a new felony conviction — none of them a violent offense, says a state Parole Board study reported by the Journal News in White Plains, N.Y. The board reported that of 1,190 convicted murderers released from 1985 to 2003 in New York state, 35, or just under 3 percent, returned to prison for a new felony conviction within three years.
"Individuals who are released on parole after serving sentences for murder consistently have the lowest recidivism rate of any offenders," said John Caher, a spokesman for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. A 2002 study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics tracking 272,000 inmates released in New York and 14 other states found that 1.2 percent of those freed after serving a murder sentence were rearrested on homicide charges within three years — the lowest rate among all reported crimes by released prisoners. "This is a very difficult issue, and unless we lock everyone up for life they're all coming back sooner or later," said Martin Horn, a former New York City corrections and probation commissioner who now teaches at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
http://www.thecrimereport.org/archive/low-recidivism-rate-reported-for-paroled-ny-murderers/
Thursday, February 17, 2011
A Counselor's Opinion On Sex Offenders - What do you think?
Here is a counselor's opinion that was sent to us. Let me know what you think!
I don't know quite how and where to begin but I feel I too must reach out in my plight in hopes to collaberate and attempt to understand healing. I have worked with both victims and offenders for many years. I am very saddened on many levels because of the constant 'reactive' state verses proactive state that is needed. The majority of male offenders I worked with were victims at one time. Few received help for their abuse, especially in the 1950's, 60's and 70's when abuse to male boys just wasn't taked about. Early in my career I found this devistating because had these men who are stuck on 'stupid' with distorted boundries, anger issues and feelings of guilt and shame possbily had a place to go or someone to talk to, they may have not become offenders themselves. As I am sure most of you already know, most offenders are not 'fixated' with small children but make warped decisions based on things they may have experienced in their own life. I do not see the public sex offender registry aiding in protecting our children, nor do I, (sorry to those who do) believe in life time punishment for all offenders. There are some offenders who do want to lead healthy lives and are capable of doing so once they are aware of the wrongs they have committed and learn to understand that what happended to them wasn't right either. I may be coming from left field with this notion, but does anyone agree with this? The registry is not a 'fix it' full proof way to keep people, especially children safe. The laws now prevent former sex offenders from housing, jobs and living what could be a productive life. Please don't think I am some crazy sex offender advocate, I am a civil rights advocate for all people and I just don't see that America's current practices are preventing anything. Either lock 'em up forever, kill them or allow healing for everyone involved, but our current lawmakers giving the public a false sense of security by gaining votes to pretend that they are tough on crime is not working. Another thing is that we cannot glorify a sexual image through poor taste media that teen girls/boys are watching like tasteless videos, etc, pass out birth control like its candy and then arrest the guys the 14 year olds are sleeping with, meanwhile allowing the 14 year old to still obtain birth contol when she needs it. We now have a young male who had consensual sex and is labeled for life, what good is that? Our current system is not working and PREVENTION from all angles is the key!
I don't know quite how and where to begin but I feel I too must reach out in my plight in hopes to collaberate and attempt to understand healing. I have worked with both victims and offenders for many years. I am very saddened on many levels because of the constant 'reactive' state verses proactive state that is needed. The majority of male offenders I worked with were victims at one time. Few received help for their abuse, especially in the 1950's, 60's and 70's when abuse to male boys just wasn't taked about. Early in my career I found this devistating because had these men who are stuck on 'stupid' with distorted boundries, anger issues and feelings of guilt and shame possbily had a place to go or someone to talk to, they may have not become offenders themselves. As I am sure most of you already know, most offenders are not 'fixated' with small children but make warped decisions based on things they may have experienced in their own life. I do not see the public sex offender registry aiding in protecting our children, nor do I, (sorry to those who do) believe in life time punishment for all offenders. There are some offenders who do want to lead healthy lives and are capable of doing so once they are aware of the wrongs they have committed and learn to understand that what happended to them wasn't right either. I may be coming from left field with this notion, but does anyone agree with this? The registry is not a 'fix it' full proof way to keep people, especially children safe. The laws now prevent former sex offenders from housing, jobs and living what could be a productive life. Please don't think I am some crazy sex offender advocate, I am a civil rights advocate for all people and I just don't see that America's current practices are preventing anything. Either lock 'em up forever, kill them or allow healing for everyone involved, but our current lawmakers giving the public a false sense of security by gaining votes to pretend that they are tough on crime is not working. Another thing is that we cannot glorify a sexual image through poor taste media that teen girls/boys are watching like tasteless videos, etc, pass out birth control like its candy and then arrest the guys the 14 year olds are sleeping with, meanwhile allowing the 14 year old to still obtain birth contol when she needs it. We now have a young male who had consensual sex and is labeled for life, what good is that? Our current system is not working and PREVENTION from all angles is the key!
Monday, February 14, 2011
WANTED: Army private wanted for rape of minor, escape
WANTED: Army private wanted for rape of minor, escape. Possibly armed and en route to LA County from Georgia.
(PHOTO OF SUSPECT DANIEL BRAZELTON can be seen by clicking on the link at the bottom of this message)
20-year old Suspect Daniel Brazelton was in the custody of the Liberty County Sheriff’s Department, in Hinesville, Georgia, awaiting extradition back to Los Angeles County to answer charges that he had raped a 15-year old victim in December 2009.
On Friday, February 11, 2011, Suspect Brazelton, who is on active duty with the United Stated Army, was removed from the custody of the Liberty County jail and taken to Fort Stewart for medical reasons. While being returned to the Liberty County jail that afternoon, Suspect Brazelton escaped from Army personnel and their transport vehicle.
The suspect’s current whereabouts are not known. An active search for Suspect Brazelton is being conducted in Georgia by law enforcement and Army personnel.
"Suspect Daniel Brazelton is wanted for the alleged rape of a minor and for escape," said Captain Mike Parker, Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "Sheriff's Special Victims Bureau Investigators believe he is possibly armed with a handgun and is considered dangerous. He most likely is receiving help in evading law enforcement and may be attempting to return to Los Angeles County. If seen, the public is asked to call 9-1-1 and allow law enforcement to take him into custody."
The victim and her family have been notified of the escape of the suspect and the possibility that he is en route to Los Angeles County.
Suspect Daniel Jay Brazelton is a White male, 20-years old, 5'07", 167 pounds, with shortly cropped black hair and brown eyes. He was clean-shaven at the time of his escape. He is currently a resident of Fort Stewart, Georgia, but was raised in Palmdale, California. (See PHOTO by clicking on the link at the bottom of this message).
If seen, call 9-1-1, your local law enforcement agency, or the Special Victims Bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department at 877-710-LASD (5273). Or, if you wish to remain anonymous, call “LA Crime Stoppers” by dialing 800-222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org.
Captain Mike Parker
Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau - Newsroom
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
(323) 267-4800
www.lasd.org
Sgt. Brian Hudson
Special Victims Bureau
Detective Division
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
877-710-LASD (5273)
Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
(PHOTO OF SUSPECT DANIEL BRAZELTON can be seen by clicking on the link at the bottom of this message)
20-year old Suspect Daniel Brazelton was in the custody of the Liberty County Sheriff’s Department, in Hinesville, Georgia, awaiting extradition back to Los Angeles County to answer charges that he had raped a 15-year old victim in December 2009.
On Friday, February 11, 2011, Suspect Brazelton, who is on active duty with the United Stated Army, was removed from the custody of the Liberty County jail and taken to Fort Stewart for medical reasons. While being returned to the Liberty County jail that afternoon, Suspect Brazelton escaped from Army personnel and their transport vehicle.
The suspect’s current whereabouts are not known. An active search for Suspect Brazelton is being conducted in Georgia by law enforcement and Army personnel.
"Suspect Daniel Brazelton is wanted for the alleged rape of a minor and for escape," said Captain Mike Parker, Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "Sheriff's Special Victims Bureau Investigators believe he is possibly armed with a handgun and is considered dangerous. He most likely is receiving help in evading law enforcement and may be attempting to return to Los Angeles County. If seen, the public is asked to call 9-1-1 and allow law enforcement to take him into custody."
The victim and her family have been notified of the escape of the suspect and the possibility that he is en route to Los Angeles County.
Suspect Daniel Jay Brazelton is a White male, 20-years old, 5'07", 167 pounds, with shortly cropped black hair and brown eyes. He was clean-shaven at the time of his escape. He is currently a resident of Fort Stewart, Georgia, but was raised in Palmdale, California. (See PHOTO by clicking on the link at the bottom of this message).
If seen, call 9-1-1, your local law enforcement agency, or the Special Victims Bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department at 877-710-LASD (5273). Or, if you wish to remain anonymous, call “LA Crime Stoppers” by dialing 800-222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org.
Captain Mike Parker
Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau - Newsroom
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
(323) 267-4800
www.lasd.org
Sgt. Brian Hudson
Special Victims Bureau
Detective Division
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
877-710-LASD (5273)
Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Two correctional facilities to remain closed because of budget issues
Two correctional facilities to remain closed because of budget issues
BY JASON KOTOWSKI, Californian staff writer
jkotowski@bakersfield.com | Thursday, Feb 10 2011
Two Kern County community correctional facilities that were supposed to reopen this month and house hundreds of low-level female inmates will remain closed.
The contract awarded last year to The GEO Group to operate the facilities was pulled because of the state's budget woes, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Cassandra Hockenson said Thursday. It costs about twice as much to keep an inmate in a smaller facility compared to a larger one, she said.
"It just didn't pencil out and this administration, obviously very concerned about the budget and the cost of reducing the budget deficit, had the programs scrapped," Hockenson said.
The McFarland Community Correctional Facility had been slated to reopen Feb. 14 and house 250 inmates. The Mesa Verde Community Correctional Facility -- located in Bakersfield -- had been scheduled for a Feb. 7 reopening and was supposed to house 400 inmates.
Exact figures on how much the facilities would have cost the state weren't immediately available.
GEO Group spokesman Pablo E. Paez was not immediately available for comment.
Also factoring into the state's decision was that the number of female prisoners has dropped over the past year and overcrowding is no longer an issue, Hockenson said. The Non-Revocable Parole and Enhanced Credits programs helped reduce the overall prison population.
The Non-Revocable Parole Program allows certain offenders to be released without being placed on parole. The Enhanced Credits Program lets inmates who participate in rehabilitation programs earn up to six weeks off their sentence per year.
The McFarland and Mesa Verde facilities first closed in late 2009 because there weren't enough low-level male inmates to fill them.
http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x563852436/Two-correctional-facilities-to-remain-closed-because-of-budget-issues
BY JASON KOTOWSKI, Californian staff writer
jkotowski@bakersfield.com | Thursday, Feb 10 2011
Two Kern County community correctional facilities that were supposed to reopen this month and house hundreds of low-level female inmates will remain closed.
The contract awarded last year to The GEO Group to operate the facilities was pulled because of the state's budget woes, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Cassandra Hockenson said Thursday. It costs about twice as much to keep an inmate in a smaller facility compared to a larger one, she said.
"It just didn't pencil out and this administration, obviously very concerned about the budget and the cost of reducing the budget deficit, had the programs scrapped," Hockenson said.
The McFarland Community Correctional Facility had been slated to reopen Feb. 14 and house 250 inmates. The Mesa Verde Community Correctional Facility -- located in Bakersfield -- had been scheduled for a Feb. 7 reopening and was supposed to house 400 inmates.
Exact figures on how much the facilities would have cost the state weren't immediately available.
GEO Group spokesman Pablo E. Paez was not immediately available for comment.
Also factoring into the state's decision was that the number of female prisoners has dropped over the past year and overcrowding is no longer an issue, Hockenson said. The Non-Revocable Parole and Enhanced Credits programs helped reduce the overall prison population.
The Non-Revocable Parole Program allows certain offenders to be released without being placed on parole. The Enhanced Credits Program lets inmates who participate in rehabilitation programs earn up to six weeks off their sentence per year.
The McFarland and Mesa Verde facilities first closed in late 2009 because there weren't enough low-level male inmates to fill them.
http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x563852436/Two-correctional-facilities-to-remain-closed-because-of-budget-issues
Saturday, February 12, 2011
The conservative case for criminal justice reform
The conservative case for criminal justice reform
February 10, 2011 By Rina Palta
Right on Crime
The financial crisis has made everyone think about priorities–whether it’s rethinking homeownership, or deciding which state programs to keep and which to cut. The upcoming state budget is full of such compromises, including a $530 million cut to services for the disabled. On Tuesday, outside San Quentin State Prison, groups of disabled citizens picketed outside the prison’s gate to protest the cut. Why were they protesting outside of a prison? Here’s what organizer John Rumsey of Marin Ventures had to say:
“When we go to the governor and legislators and say, ‘Don’t cut us,’ they say, ‘Well, where do you want us to cut? Give us some ideas,’” he said. “Well, we thought about it and we thought prisons would be a good place to start.”
Specifically, Rumsey and his fellow picketers were protesting a proposed expansion to San Quentin’s death row (which is old and overcrowded) that would cost the state about $365 million. Why spend money on the death penalty, he asked, and drop services for the disabled?
Increasingly in this recession, people are looking at our criminal justice policies–and not just capital punishment–in this light: what is the financial cost of our criminal justice system, and in comparison, how well is it working? Interestingly, a whole new movement is cropping up around this question, and it’s really growing in conservative circles. On last night’s Crosscurrents, I sat down with KALW’s Martina Castro to talk about a new movement called “Right on Crime” and how it’s changing the political landscape when it comes to criminal justice reform. (Transcript after the jump.)
MARTINA CASTRO: Alright, let’s start by talking about yesterday at San Quentin. There were a lot of things going on at the prison yesterday.
RINA PALTA: That’s right, and they all had to do with the death penalty. San Quentin houses the state’s death row and also is the site of the state’s execution chamber. As we’ve discussed on this show before, there’s currently a lawsuit about the state’s lethal injection process going on right now. And the judge presiding over that lawsuit, Judge Jeremy Fogel, visited the prison yesterday to tour the new lethal injection chamber. This is the same judge who found a lot of issues with the old chamber. So the state built a new one, and this was Judge Fogel’s opportunity to tour that chamber and see if it’s better than the old one. And these protesters from the disabled services community knew that there would be a lot of media at the prison for Judge Fogel’s tour, and they showed up to make a point about cuts to their sector. And also a larger point about the death penalty in general.
CASTRO: What point is that?
PALTA: Well, essentially, right now, there’s a proposal to rebuild death row at San Quentin because it’s getting overcrowded and because it’s a bit old and run-down. So the state is looking to expand death row, at a cost of about $365 million. So protesters really wanted to drive home the point that the state is spending a lot of money on capital punishment – which I should say, a lot of Californians support – and at the same time, not spending as much on things that they think are important, like services for disabled.
CASTRO: It seems like people are questioning more and more the amount of resources and money that go into some of our criminal justice policies.
PALTA: Yes, definitely. We’re hearing more and more about the costs of things like capital punishment and our prison system. And that’s not just in California. It’s happening nationwide. And actually, those questions are starting to come from some pretty surprising places. Let me read you a paragraph from an op-ed that appeared in the Washington Postlast month. It said, “There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential … It is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners.”
Any guesses on the author?
CASTRO: Dennis Kucinich?
PALTA: Newt Gingrich.
CASTRO: Newt Gingrich, talking about reducing the prison population and focusing on rehabilitation? Isn’t he a tough-on-crime sort of guy?
PALTA: This is the same man, you might recall, who as Speaker of the House in the 1990s, called for longer prison sentences and more prison construction.
CASTRO: So what happened?
PALTA: Well, it turns out there’s a growing movement in conservative circles to change America’s focus on incarceration. In fact, in December, a new project cropped up by theTexas Public Policy Foundation called “Right on Crime.” And the purpose of that campaign is to promote criminal justice reform based on a conservative agenda.
CASTRO: What is a conservative criminal justice reform agenda?
PALTA: Well, I called up Marc Levin, who’s heading up Right on Crime and here’s how he described the movement:
MARC LEVIN: The typical conservative I think is very appropriately skeptical of government. And we’re just saying lets apply the same scrutiny that you would apply to any government program, the same cost-benefit test, apply it to corrections as well.
CASTRO: That’s Marc Levin, of the new conservative campaign Right on Crime, talking about the conservative case for criminal justice reform.
PALTA: That’s right, so what we have from folks like Marc Levin is an argument for closing more prisons and giving shorter sentences, and getting more people into rehabilitative programs, based on the idea of small government. And this idea is really taking off. We have Newt Gingrich talking about prison reform. We have conservative governors in places like Ohio and Texas talking about funding rehabilitation and cutting down sentences.
CASTRO: Aren’t those the kinds of things that liberals have been talking about for years?
PALTA: Certainly, but for some reason, when the message comes from conservative luminaries, it seems to resonate more with the general public.
Actually, a study by the Pew Center for the States last year surveyed a bunch of people on the subject of criminal justice reform. And they found that if you talk about a policy like sending people to rehab instead of jail as a fiscally responsible thing to do, it gets a lot more approval. And, apparently, if you want to get a law passed anywhere, the best thing you can do is mention what they’re doing in Texas. The Pew study found that out of all the things that people remembered from the survey, a statement that Texas is shifting its emphasis away from prisons was the strongest and most memorable message.
So what we have here is a group of people, conservatives, who can really tackle prison reform and criminal justice reform from an almost untouchable place. And they’re pushing these concepts like rehabilitation and cutting prison populations to a national agenda. You know, Newt Gingrich, who many people say will run for president, is talking cutting prisons. And you’re just not hearing liberals prioritize this issue.
CASTRO: That’s not necessarily true in California, where we’re a liberal, or at least Democratically controlled state.
PALTA: Right, in California, we have a larger liberal movement for prison reform. Just look at Kamala Harris, who basically ran on a reform platform and won the attorney general’s race. You don’t see that national conservative movement really reaching California. Conservatives here tend to not be moving towards reform. At least not yet.
http://informant.kalwnews.org/2011/02/the-conservative-case-for-criminal-justice-reform/#
February 10, 2011 By Rina Palta
Right on Crime
The financial crisis has made everyone think about priorities–whether it’s rethinking homeownership, or deciding which state programs to keep and which to cut. The upcoming state budget is full of such compromises, including a $530 million cut to services for the disabled. On Tuesday, outside San Quentin State Prison, groups of disabled citizens picketed outside the prison’s gate to protest the cut. Why were they protesting outside of a prison? Here’s what organizer John Rumsey of Marin Ventures had to say:
“When we go to the governor and legislators and say, ‘Don’t cut us,’ they say, ‘Well, where do you want us to cut? Give us some ideas,’” he said. “Well, we thought about it and we thought prisons would be a good place to start.”
Specifically, Rumsey and his fellow picketers were protesting a proposed expansion to San Quentin’s death row (which is old and overcrowded) that would cost the state about $365 million. Why spend money on the death penalty, he asked, and drop services for the disabled?
Increasingly in this recession, people are looking at our criminal justice policies–and not just capital punishment–in this light: what is the financial cost of our criminal justice system, and in comparison, how well is it working? Interestingly, a whole new movement is cropping up around this question, and it’s really growing in conservative circles. On last night’s Crosscurrents, I sat down with KALW’s Martina Castro to talk about a new movement called “Right on Crime” and how it’s changing the political landscape when it comes to criminal justice reform. (Transcript after the jump.)
MARTINA CASTRO: Alright, let’s start by talking about yesterday at San Quentin. There were a lot of things going on at the prison yesterday.
RINA PALTA: That’s right, and they all had to do with the death penalty. San Quentin houses the state’s death row and also is the site of the state’s execution chamber. As we’ve discussed on this show before, there’s currently a lawsuit about the state’s lethal injection process going on right now. And the judge presiding over that lawsuit, Judge Jeremy Fogel, visited the prison yesterday to tour the new lethal injection chamber. This is the same judge who found a lot of issues with the old chamber. So the state built a new one, and this was Judge Fogel’s opportunity to tour that chamber and see if it’s better than the old one. And these protesters from the disabled services community knew that there would be a lot of media at the prison for Judge Fogel’s tour, and they showed up to make a point about cuts to their sector. And also a larger point about the death penalty in general.
CASTRO: What point is that?
PALTA: Well, essentially, right now, there’s a proposal to rebuild death row at San Quentin because it’s getting overcrowded and because it’s a bit old and run-down. So the state is looking to expand death row, at a cost of about $365 million. So protesters really wanted to drive home the point that the state is spending a lot of money on capital punishment – which I should say, a lot of Californians support – and at the same time, not spending as much on things that they think are important, like services for disabled.
CASTRO: It seems like people are questioning more and more the amount of resources and money that go into some of our criminal justice policies.
PALTA: Yes, definitely. We’re hearing more and more about the costs of things like capital punishment and our prison system. And that’s not just in California. It’s happening nationwide. And actually, those questions are starting to come from some pretty surprising places. Let me read you a paragraph from an op-ed that appeared in the Washington Postlast month. It said, “There is an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population, with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential … It is time to fundamentally rethink how we treat and rehabilitate our prisoners.”
Any guesses on the author?
CASTRO: Dennis Kucinich?
PALTA: Newt Gingrich.
CASTRO: Newt Gingrich, talking about reducing the prison population and focusing on rehabilitation? Isn’t he a tough-on-crime sort of guy?
PALTA: This is the same man, you might recall, who as Speaker of the House in the 1990s, called for longer prison sentences and more prison construction.
CASTRO: So what happened?
PALTA: Well, it turns out there’s a growing movement in conservative circles to change America’s focus on incarceration. In fact, in December, a new project cropped up by theTexas Public Policy Foundation called “Right on Crime.” And the purpose of that campaign is to promote criminal justice reform based on a conservative agenda.
CASTRO: What is a conservative criminal justice reform agenda?
PALTA: Well, I called up Marc Levin, who’s heading up Right on Crime and here’s how he described the movement:
MARC LEVIN: The typical conservative I think is very appropriately skeptical of government. And we’re just saying lets apply the same scrutiny that you would apply to any government program, the same cost-benefit test, apply it to corrections as well.
CASTRO: That’s Marc Levin, of the new conservative campaign Right on Crime, talking about the conservative case for criminal justice reform.
PALTA: That’s right, so what we have from folks like Marc Levin is an argument for closing more prisons and giving shorter sentences, and getting more people into rehabilitative programs, based on the idea of small government. And this idea is really taking off. We have Newt Gingrich talking about prison reform. We have conservative governors in places like Ohio and Texas talking about funding rehabilitation and cutting down sentences.
CASTRO: Aren’t those the kinds of things that liberals have been talking about for years?
PALTA: Certainly, but for some reason, when the message comes from conservative luminaries, it seems to resonate more with the general public.
Actually, a study by the Pew Center for the States last year surveyed a bunch of people on the subject of criminal justice reform. And they found that if you talk about a policy like sending people to rehab instead of jail as a fiscally responsible thing to do, it gets a lot more approval. And, apparently, if you want to get a law passed anywhere, the best thing you can do is mention what they’re doing in Texas. The Pew study found that out of all the things that people remembered from the survey, a statement that Texas is shifting its emphasis away from prisons was the strongest and most memorable message.
So what we have here is a group of people, conservatives, who can really tackle prison reform and criminal justice reform from an almost untouchable place. And they’re pushing these concepts like rehabilitation and cutting prison populations to a national agenda. You know, Newt Gingrich, who many people say will run for president, is talking cutting prisons. And you’re just not hearing liberals prioritize this issue.
CASTRO: That’s not necessarily true in California, where we’re a liberal, or at least Democratically controlled state.
PALTA: Right, in California, we have a larger liberal movement for prison reform. Just look at Kamala Harris, who basically ran on a reform platform and won the attorney general’s race. You don’t see that national conservative movement really reaching California. Conservatives here tend to not be moving towards reform. At least not yet.
http://informant.kalwnews.org/2011/02/the-conservative-case-for-criminal-justice-reform/#
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Going to Jail or Prison? Free help!
Do you know someone who is going to jail or prison? We can help them, their families and their children regardless of the crime! Free services! Please have them contact DrPrison at steve@DrPrison.org. They can also call 858-277-9868.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
One last thing to do to be ready for the Super Bowl: select a designated driver
One last thing to do to be ready for the Super Bowl: select a designated driver
You aren't prepared for the Super Bowl until you have a designated driver.
Responsible hosts know that part of showing guests a great time is making sure they get home safely. In 2009, 65 people were killed in drunk driving related crashes on Super Bowl Sunday and the morning after, the second highest number of traffic fatalities behind New Year’s Day.
---Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) http://www.madd.org/
Here are a few tips and reminders for you to consider when finalizing your plans this year:
At the party:
* Respect 21 – never serve alcohol to someone under the legal drinking age and don’t ask a minor to serve you alcohol.
* Determine ahead of time when you'll stop serving alcohol, such as one hour before the end of the party or at the end of the third quarter of
the game (just like in NFL stadiums) and begin serving coffee and dessert.
* Serve plenty of food throughout the day.
* Offer a variety of non-alcoholic choices like soft drinks, juice, and water.
* Serve one drink at a time and serve measured drinks.
* Find ways to recognize designated drivers at your party as special guests:
Give them a great spot to watch the game; make sure their glass is always full of whatever non-alcoholic drink they're having; let them have first pass at the buffet table; make sure their cars are easy to access when it is time to start driving people home.
* Be ready to step in and stop serving someone who has had too much.
* Be prepared for guests to spend the night if an alternative way home is not available.
If you’re traveling to a local bar, restaurant or other public venue:
* Find ways to recognize designated drivers when you are out at a bar or restaurant:
Offer to be the designated driver the next time you go out; cover the cost for parking or even paying for a tank of gas; pick up the tab for their food and drink. Say thank you.
* Add the numbers for local cab companies to your cell phone.
Choose your ride home. Please don’t drink and drive!
Partner to prevent or report crime by contacting your local Sheriff’s station. Or if you wish to remain Anonymous, call “LA Crime Stoppers” by dialing 800-222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org
To receive more detailed, up-to-date information directly from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) via e-mail, register for "Nixle" alerts at www.Nixle.com or more directly at https://local.nixle.com/register/ and register for "LASD – Headquarters Newsroom (SHB), Los Angeles County Sheriff" and your local LASD station area. Or, text your zip code to 888777 to receive text alerts only. Standard text messaging rates may apply depending on your calling plan.
Captain Mike Parker
Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau - Newsroom
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
(323) 267-4800
www.lasd.org
Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
You aren't prepared for the Super Bowl until you have a designated driver.
Responsible hosts know that part of showing guests a great time is making sure they get home safely. In 2009, 65 people were killed in drunk driving related crashes on Super Bowl Sunday and the morning after, the second highest number of traffic fatalities behind New Year’s Day.
---Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) http://www.madd.org/
Here are a few tips and reminders for you to consider when finalizing your plans this year:
At the party:
* Respect 21 – never serve alcohol to someone under the legal drinking age and don’t ask a minor to serve you alcohol.
* Determine ahead of time when you'll stop serving alcohol, such as one hour before the end of the party or at the end of the third quarter of
the game (just like in NFL stadiums) and begin serving coffee and dessert.
* Serve plenty of food throughout the day.
* Offer a variety of non-alcoholic choices like soft drinks, juice, and water.
* Serve one drink at a time and serve measured drinks.
* Find ways to recognize designated drivers at your party as special guests:
Give them a great spot to watch the game; make sure their glass is always full of whatever non-alcoholic drink they're having; let them have first pass at the buffet table; make sure their cars are easy to access when it is time to start driving people home.
* Be ready to step in and stop serving someone who has had too much.
* Be prepared for guests to spend the night if an alternative way home is not available.
If you’re traveling to a local bar, restaurant or other public venue:
* Find ways to recognize designated drivers when you are out at a bar or restaurant:
Offer to be the designated driver the next time you go out; cover the cost for parking or even paying for a tank of gas; pick up the tab for their food and drink. Say thank you.
* Add the numbers for local cab companies to your cell phone.
Choose your ride home. Please don’t drink and drive!
Partner to prevent or report crime by contacting your local Sheriff’s station. Or if you wish to remain Anonymous, call “LA Crime Stoppers” by dialing 800-222-TIPS (8477), texting the letters TIPLA plus your tip to CRIMES (274637), or using the website http://lacrimestoppers.org
To receive more detailed, up-to-date information directly from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) via e-mail, register for "Nixle" alerts at www.Nixle.com or more directly at https://local.nixle.com/register/ and register for "LASD – Headquarters Newsroom (SHB), Los Angeles County Sheriff" and your local LASD station area. Or, text your zip code to 888777 to receive text alerts only. Standard text messaging rates may apply depending on your calling plan.
Captain Mike Parker
Sheriff's Headquarters Bureau - Newsroom
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
(323) 267-4800
www.lasd.org
Leroy D. Baca, Sheriff
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department
The Homeless Triangle - PART III: Sentenced to indefinite homelessness
The Homeless Triangle - PART III: Sentenced to indefinite homelessness
It is universally acknowledged that the first wave of homelessness occurred when the mental health system was abolished. Many would argue that a second wave of homelessness occurred when vast amounts of affordable housing were eliminated. I would argue that a third wave of a more desperate, intractable, and frequently violent phase of homelessness has been created by our vast prison system.
How many people enter the prison system homeless? How many leave our prison system with no fixed destination? What subset of the 70 percent of ex-felons who return to prison are homeless?
Just for public safety reasons, you might assume the correctional system would want to know those numbers. A homeless person, by definition, is a wild card. You cannot know where they are at any point in time – much less immediately after a crime has occurred in the vicinity.
Surprisingly, according to both California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) research division and the voluminous reports on its website, the prison system does not track that information. A well-funded assessment tool (COMPAS), which has the goal of predicting the inmates likely to become higher-risk parolees, was begun in 2008. More than two years of data should be available regarding who at least comes into the prison system (as a first offender or returning) homeless. When contacted for that data, the prison system research analyst didn’t know there were data fields in COMPAS about homelessness, and said data wasn’t yet available. Instead, the research branch of the CDCR sent a summary list of the total number of parolees at one point in time, and the numbers among those whose address is listed as either “transient” or “homeless.” This is a very narrow definition of homelessness, since even listing a shelter’s street address, or your mother’s address (despite the fact that she won’t let you stay there), would remove you from the homeless category.
The numbers provided did not add up. Their total number of all active parolees (for all years combined) listed in the system on Oct. 21, 2010, was less than half the reported number of inmates paroled in one year alone. It is impossible to know what portion of parolees this total number represents. Perhaps only one year’s worth of released first-time inmates was provided – or the small number could be because only released re-offenders from one year was provided. However, the contact person at CDCR verified that these total numbers represented all parolees active within the system. Despite a request for information to explain this orders-of-magnitude discrepancy, there was no response.
Even within these extremely flawed constraints and extremely narrow definitions, the figures provided by CDCR show that 1,193 released prisoners are homeless in Los Angeles County with no identifiable address. Using their own provided denominator of the total point-in-time parolees in Los Angeles County, even as a severe undercount, that translates into approximately one in 25 parolees in Los Angeles County being homeless. Looked at another way, using instead as the denominator the total number of people homeless in L.A. (from their 2009 point-in-time Annual Homeless Count), one in 50 homeless people in L.A. is a released prisoner.
San Francisco has similar numbers. Although only 199 felons are listed as homeless, that represents 13 percent, or nearly one in seven released inmates. Using San Francisco’s 2009 point-in-time Homeless Count, those numbers mean that one in 33 homeless persons on the sidewalk is a parolee.
In the 2009 San Francisco Homeless Count survey, 4.5 percent of street-living respondents stated that they were homeless because of incarceration, and that same number (4.5 percent) reported their criminal record as the reason why they could not obtain permanent housing. Those survey numbers translate into roughly that one in 20 of San Francisco’s street-living homeless became homeless, and stay homeless, due to their incarceration.
A felony conviction will ban you from almost all forms of transitional, subsidized or supportive housing; sex-offender status restricts options even further, with service providers reporting that more and more sex offenders are living on the streets.
For the Bay Area as a whole, although the numbers are small, Napa County has by far the highest percentage of listed homeless parolees (17 percent, or roughly one in six). Conversely, San Mateo and Solano counties were tied for the highest estimate proportion of released felons in their homeless counts (6 percent, or roughly one in 17 homeless being a parolee).
From the relatively small numbers of studies done on this subject, and from reports from people working in this field, the following CDCR numbers – as high as they are – likely represent not an over-estimate, but, instead, an extreme undercount. A cross-sectional survey of 360 California prisoners in 2004 all aged over 55 and within two years of release from prison found that the “Mean age was 61 years; 93.8 percent were men and 56.5 percent were white. Nearly 40 percent were veterans, of whom 77.2 percent reported likely VA service eligibility…Overall, 79.1 percent reported a medical condition and 13.6 percent reported a serious mental illness.” In our California prisons in 2004, older inmates (who make up nearly one in seven inmates) soon to be released had extremely high rates of health problems, and 1 in 12 reported a risk factor for homelessness.
And even those risks, given our markedly depressed current economy, have likely only worsened.
Sick and on the streets
Inmates released from California prisons often have no food, no place to go, no money, no change of clothes, no pills, no identification, no phone, no strong family ties, and little to no hope of employment. One third were originally incarcerated for drug-related reasons. They’re older, and frequently ill. They’ve been stripped of qualified coverage and have no appointments or ongoing care. Without an address or a phone, obtaining those is nearly impossible for many. Even if a parolee had a sound education, and is extremely motivated to change, with no history of mental illness, impulse control, or disabilities of any kind, our current release-process from prison is a perfect storm of conditions to create and perpetuate homelessness, even among the most motivated and self-disciplined. And 130,000 Californians a year are experiencing this. What’s remarkable is that even more of them are not on our sidewalks.
But is this a public health problem?
Once a person loses their home, their life expectancy plunges. People on the streets die at rate four to 32 times that of people living behind a wall. Additionally, people struggling without a home often churn between states of street-living (called “sleeping rough”), transitional or sheltered living, and stints in marginal transient housing often called SROs (single room occupancy hotels). The reality of the homeless churn again points to the likely extreme undercounting of the true numbers of homeless released prisoners.
Once a person is living homeless, people often become trapped in a complex web of violence, mental illness and substance abuse. Starvation is not unusual, and homeless people increasingly learn to ignore physiologic signals that something is wrong. Head trauma is shockingly common (with reported rates of more than 70 percent), severe, and often results, short and long-term, in a loss of “executive functioning.” Executive functioning encompasses such abstract abilities as long-range planning, and goal-setting, and the loss can result in impulse control problems, depression and rage disorders.
Those struggling on the street often die of preventable and treatable illnesses. And when the health hit of living on the streets begins to take its toll, homeless people tend to access our safety-net public health systems in sporadic, ineffective and very expensive ways. All of these factors together converge into a profile of early mortality, immense suffering and high cost.
Changing the prison-homeless churn
There are many simple, relatively cheap institutional changes that can dramatically alter the barriers facing Californians released from prison, and decreasing their risks of homelessness. They include:
Prior to release, automatically re-enrolling inmates who were stripped of their Medi-Cal and Medicare coverage at the time of incarceration, at least on a probationary basis
Providing a California identification card to each released inmate who does not have one
Printing for each inmate a one-page summary of their medical history and medications
Creating and implementing sanctions and penalties for whenever the prison system fails to perform mandated case-management visits prior to the release of mentally ill inmates
Collecting, tracking and analyzing homeless rates (based on any widely acceptable definition among the many that exist) of admitted, released, and reincarcerated prisoners
Either reducing out-of-state prison transfers, or, at minimum, being highly selective about which prisoners are chosen for out-of-state incarceration based on the vulnerability of their relationship ties
Arranging an identified post-release medical home and appointment for inmates with recent surgeries, on-going treatment for infections and a selected list of chronic conditions requiring uninterrupted medication compliance – not just mental illness and HIV. There are more complex and highly effective ways to address the link between incarceration and homelessness. The good news is that the CDCR as a whole seems to be moving toward a much more rehabilitation focused approach. Models that have been developed for jail inmates could serve as a useful template for dealing with some of the most high risk and mentally ill inmates where appropriate.
Mental health courts have been implemented in a number of cities, including San Francisco. Results of their effectiveness, from the CDCR website, include: “prior to program enrollment, a total of 887 bookings for new offenses were reported; post-program, only 126 bookings - an 86 percent reduction. With the exception of two counties, it appears programs are having a positive effect on reducing the severity of new offenses by 5 percent.
The number of days in jail also decreased significantly; there were 45,611 jail days pre-enrollment but only 2,320 jail days post-enrollment, a 95 percent decrease. Note: clients participating in programs with a mental health court spent less time in jail post-enrollment than clients not participating in a mental health court.
The number of individuals homeless for any amount of time decreased by only 65 percent although the number of days these individuals have been homeless post-enrollment has decreased significantly; 212 participants previously reported being homeless for an average of 72 days - these same individuals have now reported being homeless an average of less than seven days, a 97 percent decrease.
Those are impressive results.
So is it worth investing the kind of multi-system effort that creating, legalizing and setting up a mental health court for prison-level parole violations and convictions would require?
Recognizing the role that the prison system plays in creating, concentrating and condemning ex-offenders to a lifetime of homelessness may allow us to create effective interventions and change the culture on our streets. It might also buffer the long-term public health costs and consequences we all must bear from the complicated mix of homelessness, violence, substance abuse and mental illness.
Prison churn certainly can explain at least in part the frustrations cities and communities feel of never making a dent in homelessness despite devoting large amounts of efforts to do so. Prisons will continue to release people at higher rates than they can be rapidly housed and reintegrated. Even if you ignore the toll in terms of human suffering, the economics cannot be sustained. Devoting $10 billion a year of our state’s dollars to incarcerate one in 1,000 people when a significant proportion will inevitably end up on our sidewalks dying premature, preventable deaths at additional exorbitant cost – that is a price too high to bear.
http://spot.us/stories/791-the-homeless-triangle-san-francisco-los-angeles-and-prison
It is universally acknowledged that the first wave of homelessness occurred when the mental health system was abolished. Many would argue that a second wave of homelessness occurred when vast amounts of affordable housing were eliminated. I would argue that a third wave of a more desperate, intractable, and frequently violent phase of homelessness has been created by our vast prison system.
How many people enter the prison system homeless? How many leave our prison system with no fixed destination? What subset of the 70 percent of ex-felons who return to prison are homeless?
Just for public safety reasons, you might assume the correctional system would want to know those numbers. A homeless person, by definition, is a wild card. You cannot know where they are at any point in time – much less immediately after a crime has occurred in the vicinity.
Surprisingly, according to both California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) research division and the voluminous reports on its website, the prison system does not track that information. A well-funded assessment tool (COMPAS), which has the goal of predicting the inmates likely to become higher-risk parolees, was begun in 2008. More than two years of data should be available regarding who at least comes into the prison system (as a first offender or returning) homeless. When contacted for that data, the prison system research analyst didn’t know there were data fields in COMPAS about homelessness, and said data wasn’t yet available. Instead, the research branch of the CDCR sent a summary list of the total number of parolees at one point in time, and the numbers among those whose address is listed as either “transient” or “homeless.” This is a very narrow definition of homelessness, since even listing a shelter’s street address, or your mother’s address (despite the fact that she won’t let you stay there), would remove you from the homeless category.
The numbers provided did not add up. Their total number of all active parolees (for all years combined) listed in the system on Oct. 21, 2010, was less than half the reported number of inmates paroled in one year alone. It is impossible to know what portion of parolees this total number represents. Perhaps only one year’s worth of released first-time inmates was provided – or the small number could be because only released re-offenders from one year was provided. However, the contact person at CDCR verified that these total numbers represented all parolees active within the system. Despite a request for information to explain this orders-of-magnitude discrepancy, there was no response.
Even within these extremely flawed constraints and extremely narrow definitions, the figures provided by CDCR show that 1,193 released prisoners are homeless in Los Angeles County with no identifiable address. Using their own provided denominator of the total point-in-time parolees in Los Angeles County, even as a severe undercount, that translates into approximately one in 25 parolees in Los Angeles County being homeless. Looked at another way, using instead as the denominator the total number of people homeless in L.A. (from their 2009 point-in-time Annual Homeless Count), one in 50 homeless people in L.A. is a released prisoner.
San Francisco has similar numbers. Although only 199 felons are listed as homeless, that represents 13 percent, or nearly one in seven released inmates. Using San Francisco’s 2009 point-in-time Homeless Count, those numbers mean that one in 33 homeless persons on the sidewalk is a parolee.
In the 2009 San Francisco Homeless Count survey, 4.5 percent of street-living respondents stated that they were homeless because of incarceration, and that same number (4.5 percent) reported their criminal record as the reason why they could not obtain permanent housing. Those survey numbers translate into roughly that one in 20 of San Francisco’s street-living homeless became homeless, and stay homeless, due to their incarceration.
A felony conviction will ban you from almost all forms of transitional, subsidized or supportive housing; sex-offender status restricts options even further, with service providers reporting that more and more sex offenders are living on the streets.
For the Bay Area as a whole, although the numbers are small, Napa County has by far the highest percentage of listed homeless parolees (17 percent, or roughly one in six). Conversely, San Mateo and Solano counties were tied for the highest estimate proportion of released felons in their homeless counts (6 percent, or roughly one in 17 homeless being a parolee).
From the relatively small numbers of studies done on this subject, and from reports from people working in this field, the following CDCR numbers – as high as they are – likely represent not an over-estimate, but, instead, an extreme undercount. A cross-sectional survey of 360 California prisoners in 2004 all aged over 55 and within two years of release from prison found that the “Mean age was 61 years; 93.8 percent were men and 56.5 percent were white. Nearly 40 percent were veterans, of whom 77.2 percent reported likely VA service eligibility…Overall, 79.1 percent reported a medical condition and 13.6 percent reported a serious mental illness.” In our California prisons in 2004, older inmates (who make up nearly one in seven inmates) soon to be released had extremely high rates of health problems, and 1 in 12 reported a risk factor for homelessness.
And even those risks, given our markedly depressed current economy, have likely only worsened.
Sick and on the streets
Inmates released from California prisons often have no food, no place to go, no money, no change of clothes, no pills, no identification, no phone, no strong family ties, and little to no hope of employment. One third were originally incarcerated for drug-related reasons. They’re older, and frequently ill. They’ve been stripped of qualified coverage and have no appointments or ongoing care. Without an address or a phone, obtaining those is nearly impossible for many. Even if a parolee had a sound education, and is extremely motivated to change, with no history of mental illness, impulse control, or disabilities of any kind, our current release-process from prison is a perfect storm of conditions to create and perpetuate homelessness, even among the most motivated and self-disciplined. And 130,000 Californians a year are experiencing this. What’s remarkable is that even more of them are not on our sidewalks.
But is this a public health problem?
Once a person loses their home, their life expectancy plunges. People on the streets die at rate four to 32 times that of people living behind a wall. Additionally, people struggling without a home often churn between states of street-living (called “sleeping rough”), transitional or sheltered living, and stints in marginal transient housing often called SROs (single room occupancy hotels). The reality of the homeless churn again points to the likely extreme undercounting of the true numbers of homeless released prisoners.
Once a person is living homeless, people often become trapped in a complex web of violence, mental illness and substance abuse. Starvation is not unusual, and homeless people increasingly learn to ignore physiologic signals that something is wrong. Head trauma is shockingly common (with reported rates of more than 70 percent), severe, and often results, short and long-term, in a loss of “executive functioning.” Executive functioning encompasses such abstract abilities as long-range planning, and goal-setting, and the loss can result in impulse control problems, depression and rage disorders.
Those struggling on the street often die of preventable and treatable illnesses. And when the health hit of living on the streets begins to take its toll, homeless people tend to access our safety-net public health systems in sporadic, ineffective and very expensive ways. All of these factors together converge into a profile of early mortality, immense suffering and high cost.
Changing the prison-homeless churn
There are many simple, relatively cheap institutional changes that can dramatically alter the barriers facing Californians released from prison, and decreasing their risks of homelessness. They include:
Prior to release, automatically re-enrolling inmates who were stripped of their Medi-Cal and Medicare coverage at the time of incarceration, at least on a probationary basis
Providing a California identification card to each released inmate who does not have one
Printing for each inmate a one-page summary of their medical history and medications
Creating and implementing sanctions and penalties for whenever the prison system fails to perform mandated case-management visits prior to the release of mentally ill inmates
Collecting, tracking and analyzing homeless rates (based on any widely acceptable definition among the many that exist) of admitted, released, and reincarcerated prisoners
Either reducing out-of-state prison transfers, or, at minimum, being highly selective about which prisoners are chosen for out-of-state incarceration based on the vulnerability of their relationship ties
Arranging an identified post-release medical home and appointment for inmates with recent surgeries, on-going treatment for infections and a selected list of chronic conditions requiring uninterrupted medication compliance – not just mental illness and HIV. There are more complex and highly effective ways to address the link between incarceration and homelessness. The good news is that the CDCR as a whole seems to be moving toward a much more rehabilitation focused approach. Models that have been developed for jail inmates could serve as a useful template for dealing with some of the most high risk and mentally ill inmates where appropriate.
Mental health courts have been implemented in a number of cities, including San Francisco. Results of their effectiveness, from the CDCR website, include: “prior to program enrollment, a total of 887 bookings for new offenses were reported; post-program, only 126 bookings - an 86 percent reduction. With the exception of two counties, it appears programs are having a positive effect on reducing the severity of new offenses by 5 percent.
The number of days in jail also decreased significantly; there were 45,611 jail days pre-enrollment but only 2,320 jail days post-enrollment, a 95 percent decrease. Note: clients participating in programs with a mental health court spent less time in jail post-enrollment than clients not participating in a mental health court.
The number of individuals homeless for any amount of time decreased by only 65 percent although the number of days these individuals have been homeless post-enrollment has decreased significantly; 212 participants previously reported being homeless for an average of 72 days - these same individuals have now reported being homeless an average of less than seven days, a 97 percent decrease.
Those are impressive results.
So is it worth investing the kind of multi-system effort that creating, legalizing and setting up a mental health court for prison-level parole violations and convictions would require?
Recognizing the role that the prison system plays in creating, concentrating and condemning ex-offenders to a lifetime of homelessness may allow us to create effective interventions and change the culture on our streets. It might also buffer the long-term public health costs and consequences we all must bear from the complicated mix of homelessness, violence, substance abuse and mental illness.
Prison churn certainly can explain at least in part the frustrations cities and communities feel of never making a dent in homelessness despite devoting large amounts of efforts to do so. Prisons will continue to release people at higher rates than they can be rapidly housed and reintegrated. Even if you ignore the toll in terms of human suffering, the economics cannot be sustained. Devoting $10 billion a year of our state’s dollars to incarcerate one in 1,000 people when a significant proportion will inevitably end up on our sidewalks dying premature, preventable deaths at additional exorbitant cost – that is a price too high to bear.
http://spot.us/stories/791-the-homeless-triangle-san-francisco-los-angeles-and-prison
The Homeless Triangle - Part II Get on the Bus
The Homeless Triangle - Part II Get on the Bus
R. Jan Gurley February 3, 2011
Each year, for 130,000 Californians, the prison door is unlocked one day and the question now becomes - where do you go? And how do you get there? Do you get any money? If so, how much? It is remarkably hard to find an answer to those basic questions, even if you’re a concerned family member trying to find out.
Nowhere on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) website could I find a description of the release process, or how a destination is chosen, or how much (or little) financial aid or transportation help a prisoner might get upon release. If you are the mother of a son with disabilities, impulse control disorders, and mental illness and you’re trying to find out exactly when he’ll be released – you can’t know. And if you’re trying to find out where he might be headed, or how much money the prison system might give him – you can’t know.
Recently released prisoners often tell me in clinic that they got “nothing.” After 10, or two, or 15 years, the door is unlocked and they take a bus somewhere with no medicine, no appointments, no place to stay and not a penny to their name. After being unable to verify this process on the CDCR website, but finding references in news articles to “$200 and a bus pass,” I decided to call CDCR and find out what was true. Eventually, I spoke to the highly professional and extremely helpful officer Joanne Duroncelet. She was a bit surprised that she couldn’t find the information on the website either. But she proceeded to explain that decisions about what you’re given, and where you can go on release can be highly variable. The maximum someone can get on release is indeed $200 – but you’re not guaranteed it. And there is no adjustment for length of time behind bars. And, if you need a bus ticket, and/or clothes, those come out of that same amount.
But you may indeed arrive in a neighborhood without a penny. There is something called a “parole hold,” which is when a parole officer decides to keep whatever is left of your potential after-bus-ticket-and-clothes money. A parole officer may choose to do that to encourage you to comply with the conditions of your parole (such as checking in). How does a parole hold decision get made? It depends on the parole officer, I was told.
Officer Duroncelet also later sent me the link to the written policy, which is here: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Regulations/Adult_Operations/docs/DOM/Ch_8_Printed_Final_DOM.pdf
When it comes to the choice of destination, many prisoners may have contraindications that prevent them from returning to within 35 miles of the place they previously lived. Reasons can include a stay-away order, history of domestic violence, restraining orders or sometimes as a condition of parole. No data exists on where those people go, or how many of them become homeless in a different community’s neighborhoods. But generally speaking, most prisoners are expected to return to their county of incarceration. If you have relationships to rely on, that’s where you are expected to go. Back where it all began.
Set up to fail
So you’ve got no food, no place to stay, no money, no pills, no appointment, no health insurance. But you can still work, right?
Unfortunately, many prisoners are released without at least one ingredient crucial to getting hired: an I.D. Forget about skills, or education, or the depressed economy. If you’ve got no driver’s license, no passport and no social security card, you can’t get a job. At least not a legal one.
And if you have nothing to prove who you are, how do you prove who you are?
The bottom-line step that is required to cut through the circular bureaucracy is to obtain a notarized birth certificate. Just being able to figure that out is quite complex – even if you have no issues with literacy, access to technology or a disabling mental illness. Unfortunately, you must go to your county of birth to obtain it. Even after you’ve figured out what is required, without an address, a vehicle, or money, how are you going to achieve that step, the first one required just to be able to start the process of obtaining I.D.?
At Project Homeless Connect in San Francisco, the line in front of the booth for assistance obtaining an I.D. is consistently huge. Lack of identification is a large barrier that many, many people cannot overcome without assistance – particularly for those living on the street.
If there is any division in the entire state that is in an excellent position to certify a prisoner’s identification, it would be the Department of Corrections. They, more than any other, should be able to issue the same state identification to any and all people being released from prison. Not a correctional I.D. – that is a form of identification that would not be acceptable for employment for many reasons - but the very same state identification that the DMV issues. It’s hard to imagine why this isn’t done prior to release, even if you may not be out for long.
The news is full of the overwhelming difficulty finding a job in our current economy. Even for people with highly marketable skills and extensive contacts, unemployment can be prolonged – and can become a semi-permanent state. Add to that backdrop the reality of a felony conviction. Felony convictions render applicants not only undesirable, but also bar them from many types of work, such as getting a contractor’s license.
Added to that is the well-documented fact that felony convictions don’t occur evenly across populations. If you grew up in an environment with poor educational and employment levels, your chances of being incarcerated are higher. Your chances of being employed at any job, once released, without marketable skills or education, are quite small. How do you even look for a job without an address, money, a phone, a change of clothes or transportation?
And what are you going to do for food during the time you’re looking for a job?
The brutal fact is, once you’re sent to prison and released, the majority of people don’t stay out of prison. California also has the highest recidivism rate in the nation – 70 percent. Only 25 percent of prison admissions are actually a new prisoner. By far the largest majority of admissions are people sent back to prison for parole violations.
And among the group of people returned to prison for what might be called a “fresh felony,” important differences emerge. The types of crimes committed differ between those who are sent to prison for the first time, versus those who were in prison before, and are now being incarcerated for a new felony court commitment.
In 2009, of the more than 63,000 first time prisoners sent to prison, about a third committed crimes against people, about a third committed property crimes, and about a third committed drug-related offenses. But of the 18,000-plus former prisoners who were sent to prison for a new court commitment, only 18 percent committed crimes against people. About 30 percent again were committed for drug offenses. Property crimes rose to approximately 40 percent - of which the largest sub-groups were second-degree burglary and petty theft with a prior. The remaining crimes fell into the category of “other” (12 percent), of which possession of a weapon was by far the highest subgroup. What do these changing numbers tell us? In a best-case scenario, these numbers might imply that prisoners learn something from their imprisonment – and are much less likely afterward to commit violent crimes against people.
A more cynical view might be that, as a group, after release, as time passes, even if they don’t want to re-commit a violent crime, ex-offenders become increasingly economically desperate.
Although a different state, data from Massachusetts supports that interpretation. Researchers did a random-sample survey of 17,565 prisoners to determine their rates of homelessness in the year prior to incarceration. They found that 9 percent of inmates had been homeless – a rate 4 to 6 times the rate in a comparably matched adult population (matched for age, race/ethnicity and gender). They also found that “In comparison to other inmates, these homeless inmates were more likely to be currently incarcerated for a property crime, but also to have had previous criminal justice system involvement for both property and violent crimes, to suffer from mental health and/or substance abuse problems, and to be more likely to have been unemployed and with a low income.”
***
Carried across state lines
Prison erodes and eventually can destroy even the strongest of relationships. Those effects can occur in a relatively short time, but are more likely the longer the term of incarceration. Our recent attempt at cost-cutting the $49,000 per year that California spends on our lowest-level inmates has led to shipping prisoners out of state to private facilities
.
Given the fact that people who are incarcerated disproportionately come from economically deprived communities, sending prisoners out of state will most often mean that families, even if they wished to, cannot afford to travel to see inmates. Extended time apart, and extensive geographic distances, fracture already strained relationships.
California may be saving money in the short run, but sending prisoners out of state may mean we are sentencing a higher number of released prisoners to homelessness when they are returned to us after release.
http://spot.us/pitches/515-the-homeless-triangle-san-francisco-los-angeles-and-prison/posts/873
R. Jan Gurley February 3, 2011
Each year, for 130,000 Californians, the prison door is unlocked one day and the question now becomes - where do you go? And how do you get there? Do you get any money? If so, how much? It is remarkably hard to find an answer to those basic questions, even if you’re a concerned family member trying to find out.
Nowhere on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s (CDCR) website could I find a description of the release process, or how a destination is chosen, or how much (or little) financial aid or transportation help a prisoner might get upon release. If you are the mother of a son with disabilities, impulse control disorders, and mental illness and you’re trying to find out exactly when he’ll be released – you can’t know. And if you’re trying to find out where he might be headed, or how much money the prison system might give him – you can’t know.
Recently released prisoners often tell me in clinic that they got “nothing.” After 10, or two, or 15 years, the door is unlocked and they take a bus somewhere with no medicine, no appointments, no place to stay and not a penny to their name. After being unable to verify this process on the CDCR website, but finding references in news articles to “$200 and a bus pass,” I decided to call CDCR and find out what was true. Eventually, I spoke to the highly professional and extremely helpful officer Joanne Duroncelet. She was a bit surprised that she couldn’t find the information on the website either. But she proceeded to explain that decisions about what you’re given, and where you can go on release can be highly variable. The maximum someone can get on release is indeed $200 – but you’re not guaranteed it. And there is no adjustment for length of time behind bars. And, if you need a bus ticket, and/or clothes, those come out of that same amount.
But you may indeed arrive in a neighborhood without a penny. There is something called a “parole hold,” which is when a parole officer decides to keep whatever is left of your potential after-bus-ticket-and-clothes money. A parole officer may choose to do that to encourage you to comply with the conditions of your parole (such as checking in). How does a parole hold decision get made? It depends on the parole officer, I was told.
Officer Duroncelet also later sent me the link to the written policy, which is here: http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Regulations/Adult_Operations/docs/DOM/Ch_8_Printed_Final_DOM.pdf
When it comes to the choice of destination, many prisoners may have contraindications that prevent them from returning to within 35 miles of the place they previously lived. Reasons can include a stay-away order, history of domestic violence, restraining orders or sometimes as a condition of parole. No data exists on where those people go, or how many of them become homeless in a different community’s neighborhoods. But generally speaking, most prisoners are expected to return to their county of incarceration. If you have relationships to rely on, that’s where you are expected to go. Back where it all began.
Set up to fail
So you’ve got no food, no place to stay, no money, no pills, no appointment, no health insurance. But you can still work, right?
Unfortunately, many prisoners are released without at least one ingredient crucial to getting hired: an I.D. Forget about skills, or education, or the depressed economy. If you’ve got no driver’s license, no passport and no social security card, you can’t get a job. At least not a legal one.
And if you have nothing to prove who you are, how do you prove who you are?
The bottom-line step that is required to cut through the circular bureaucracy is to obtain a notarized birth certificate. Just being able to figure that out is quite complex – even if you have no issues with literacy, access to technology or a disabling mental illness. Unfortunately, you must go to your county of birth to obtain it. Even after you’ve figured out what is required, without an address, a vehicle, or money, how are you going to achieve that step, the first one required just to be able to start the process of obtaining I.D.?
At Project Homeless Connect in San Francisco, the line in front of the booth for assistance obtaining an I.D. is consistently huge. Lack of identification is a large barrier that many, many people cannot overcome without assistance – particularly for those living on the street.
If there is any division in the entire state that is in an excellent position to certify a prisoner’s identification, it would be the Department of Corrections. They, more than any other, should be able to issue the same state identification to any and all people being released from prison. Not a correctional I.D. – that is a form of identification that would not be acceptable for employment for many reasons - but the very same state identification that the DMV issues. It’s hard to imagine why this isn’t done prior to release, even if you may not be out for long.
The news is full of the overwhelming difficulty finding a job in our current economy. Even for people with highly marketable skills and extensive contacts, unemployment can be prolonged – and can become a semi-permanent state. Add to that backdrop the reality of a felony conviction. Felony convictions render applicants not only undesirable, but also bar them from many types of work, such as getting a contractor’s license.
Added to that is the well-documented fact that felony convictions don’t occur evenly across populations. If you grew up in an environment with poor educational and employment levels, your chances of being incarcerated are higher. Your chances of being employed at any job, once released, without marketable skills or education, are quite small. How do you even look for a job without an address, money, a phone, a change of clothes or transportation?
And what are you going to do for food during the time you’re looking for a job?
The brutal fact is, once you’re sent to prison and released, the majority of people don’t stay out of prison. California also has the highest recidivism rate in the nation – 70 percent. Only 25 percent of prison admissions are actually a new prisoner. By far the largest majority of admissions are people sent back to prison for parole violations.
And among the group of people returned to prison for what might be called a “fresh felony,” important differences emerge. The types of crimes committed differ between those who are sent to prison for the first time, versus those who were in prison before, and are now being incarcerated for a new felony court commitment.
In 2009, of the more than 63,000 first time prisoners sent to prison, about a third committed crimes against people, about a third committed property crimes, and about a third committed drug-related offenses. But of the 18,000-plus former prisoners who were sent to prison for a new court commitment, only 18 percent committed crimes against people. About 30 percent again were committed for drug offenses. Property crimes rose to approximately 40 percent - of which the largest sub-groups were second-degree burglary and petty theft with a prior. The remaining crimes fell into the category of “other” (12 percent), of which possession of a weapon was by far the highest subgroup. What do these changing numbers tell us? In a best-case scenario, these numbers might imply that prisoners learn something from their imprisonment – and are much less likely afterward to commit violent crimes against people.
A more cynical view might be that, as a group, after release, as time passes, even if they don’t want to re-commit a violent crime, ex-offenders become increasingly economically desperate.
Although a different state, data from Massachusetts supports that interpretation. Researchers did a random-sample survey of 17,565 prisoners to determine their rates of homelessness in the year prior to incarceration. They found that 9 percent of inmates had been homeless – a rate 4 to 6 times the rate in a comparably matched adult population (matched for age, race/ethnicity and gender). They also found that “In comparison to other inmates, these homeless inmates were more likely to be currently incarcerated for a property crime, but also to have had previous criminal justice system involvement for both property and violent crimes, to suffer from mental health and/or substance abuse problems, and to be more likely to have been unemployed and with a low income.”
***
Carried across state lines
Prison erodes and eventually can destroy even the strongest of relationships. Those effects can occur in a relatively short time, but are more likely the longer the term of incarceration. Our recent attempt at cost-cutting the $49,000 per year that California spends on our lowest-level inmates has led to shipping prisoners out of state to private facilities
.
Given the fact that people who are incarcerated disproportionately come from economically deprived communities, sending prisoners out of state will most often mean that families, even if they wished to, cannot afford to travel to see inmates. Extended time apart, and extensive geographic distances, fracture already strained relationships.
California may be saving money in the short run, but sending prisoners out of state may mean we are sentencing a higher number of released prisoners to homelessness when they are returned to us after release.
http://spot.us/pitches/515-the-homeless-triangle-san-francisco-los-angeles-and-prison/posts/873
Homeless Triangle, Part 1: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Prison
Homeless Triangle, Part 1: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Prison
February 02, 2011
by R. Jan Gurley. Funded by Spot.us community members and The Daily Casserole.
This is the first of a two-part series on “The Homeless Triangle: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Prison.” The full story wiht the second part will be published in full tomorrow in The Daily Casserole.
Part 1: The Reality of Prison Release
If you work as a doctor in a clinic for the homeless, you see all kinds of simmering panic. There’s the “God, someone’s got to help me” panic of the person who lost their house to foreclosure. There’s the fatalistic panic of a street person with a hard, bone-rattling cough who senses, deep inside, that this might be the infection that kills her.
But this time, when the man stopped me in the hallway between exam rooms, grabbing my upper arm a little too tightly, there was a different kind of panic in his eyes.
“I don’t know how to find the bathroom,” the man said, terror-stricken. “Curtis,” with salt and pepper hair, was in his late 50s.
“It’s just around the corner – through those doors and to the right.” I hoped to speed-walk past him, but his grip on my arm only tightened.
“I can’t do that,” he said, his voice rising to a near-shout.
His upper lip was shaky with emotion. The only clue that his problem wasn’t some type of unusual neurological defect was the fact that he had way more muscles than you’d expect to see on a man his age. “Just got out of prison?” I said.
He gave a sharp nod. “Twenty years in a cell. I walked down one corridor. That’s all. For over 20 years.” He said it again, this time shouting it: “I can’t find the bathroom.”
My mind struggled to grasp his last 20 years. All the changes in the world. All the ways in which we maneuver through our lives -– simple things that he’d never done. He’d become a man no longer able to even follow an easy task like going through the doors and turning right. At his age, to have been so restricted for so long in prison, he’d undoubtedly committed a truly vile and violent act against another person.
But now he is, as we say in the healthcare business, ours.
He is a man who is unemployable, with multiple chronic health problems, and most likely -– even without being confronted with all he cannot do — with serious anger management and impulse-control issues. He is in our town with nowhere to stay, nowhere to go and no ability to get there.
“I’ll walk you there,” I said, and wondered, as we walked the few feet to the bathroom doors, which way he would go when he left the clinic.
He wasn’t mentally ill. He didn’t have HIV. He had high blood pressure and diabetes and high cholesterol and prostate problems that might turn out to be prostate cancer. He had no idea what tests had been done in prison, or what pills or doses he’d taken for the last many years. After 20 years in a prison with years of treatment for chronic health problems, he had no summary — not even a health card or a discharge print-out.
We did what we could. We picked random pills and doses to start him on, since he’d been without medicines for several days already. He had no money for a co-pay so we gave him what we could out of our medicine closet. We told him to come back in two days so we could check how he was doing.
But as he left to sleep on a sidewalk in San Francisco, we all –- myself, the nurse, the staff -– wondered the same thing. He had no food, no place, no ties to anyone, no way to get money. At all. So how long would it be before he hurt someone, just so he could get back to prison?
Because, odds are, he will.
Prison Churn and Homeless Churn
California incarcerates more of its population than any other state, with roughly one in 1,000 Californians sent to prison each year. As of August 2009, there were 166,569 Californians in prison. And these numbers exclude jail. Prison is very different from jail. Jail is local, for smaller offenses, or as a holding place until verdicts are handed out. Prison is for felons, more serious offenses, and, generally, for much longer sentences. But our state’s prison system is far from static. Except for a very tiny minority, every single prisoner eventually will come back to our neighborhoods. Generally speaking, more than 100,000 people are released, and more than 100,000 people are incarcerated every single year. Our prison system released in excess of 130,000 people into our neighborhoods in 2009 alone.
The logistics represented by those numbers is mind-boggling. That’s basically the same number of people as the entire population of Humboldt County, or the entire city of Concord. Here’s what getting out is like. You’re not told exactly when you’ll be able to leave. Your family -– if you still have any relationships left -– can’t know either. No one can know. For security reasons, no one is told, ever, an exact date of release.
One day, the door is unlocked. Only if you have certain designated types of mental illness, or have HIV that’s being treated, are you given any pills when you leave. And even then you’re only given a 30-day supply as you go.
The California prison system is now the largest provider of mental health care in the state. Despite that, most studies show that a large number of seriously mentally ill prisoners are not diagnosed and treated while incarcerated. But the prisoners who are being treated for mental illness are now mandated to be given a case management assessment and an appointment for follow-up prior to release. The prison system’s own study shows that just one visit from a case manager prior to release is highly effective at reducing recidivism and increasing compliance with follow-up appointments. But the very same study also showed that no visits at all are being done in almost 50 percent of cases, even though staff were hired to perform them, and it’s mandated by state law. No one knows why they’re not being done.
The California prison population has aged, with four out of 10 age 40 or over, with one in seven prisoners 50 or older. Many have multiple health problems. As the healthcare costs for prisoners have soared, there have been reports of expedited releases for prisoners with complex medical problems.
But no matter what your age, even if you’re a person with diabetes requiring insulin, or if you usually take many pills, or recently had surgery, or are being treated for an infection — you’re not given even one dose when you leave. You’re not given any appointments, or even any chance to make an appointment. Even if you’re a diabetic, you may not be allowed to eat breakfast. Despite prison health services, collectively, commanding a $2 billion annual budget, no one, not even the people with mental illness or HIV, is given even a piece of paper on release with any medical information on it.
And, of course, when you leave prison, you don’t have health insurance.
After release, all your health issues will be, without a doubt, sooner or later the problem of whatever county you’re headed toward. Why the county? Even if you had a permanent disability, and federally paid or subsidized Medi-Cal or Medicare coverage for reasons of poverty or disability, when you are imprisoned, all your coverage is automatically canceled. Clearly, no one thinks a prisoner should be drawing benefits while behind bars. The problem, however, comes when a person is released. There is no automatic restoration of that same coverage, even for permanent disability. The county alone will bear the burden of your medical care upon your release. And, often the county may wind up paying for it forever more. Having your coverage re-instated is almost always a long and complex process, requiring multiple visits, and a high level of literacy and persistence. And the reinstatement process, it goes without saying, requires an address.
There is no reason why the prison system cannot be as efficient at reinstating coverage as it is at canceling that same coverage. If there are doubts about whether qualifying conditions still exist, there is also no reason why coverage could not be reinstated upon release for a probationary period of, say, six months. It would then lapse unless the released prisoner was seen and assessed by an outside provider. Such a process would be a powerful incentive for released prisoners to maintain preventive care. And for counties to be able to provide care instead of post-release crisis-level, unreimbursed emergency room visits.
This post was written by:
Spot.us - who has written 26 posts on Daily Casserole.
http://www.dailycasserole.com/2011/02/02/homeless-triangle-part-1-san-francisco-los-angeles-and-prison/
February 02, 2011
by R. Jan Gurley. Funded by Spot.us community members and The Daily Casserole.
This is the first of a two-part series on “The Homeless Triangle: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Prison.” The full story wiht the second part will be published in full tomorrow in The Daily Casserole.
Part 1: The Reality of Prison Release
If you work as a doctor in a clinic for the homeless, you see all kinds of simmering panic. There’s the “God, someone’s got to help me” panic of the person who lost their house to foreclosure. There’s the fatalistic panic of a street person with a hard, bone-rattling cough who senses, deep inside, that this might be the infection that kills her.
But this time, when the man stopped me in the hallway between exam rooms, grabbing my upper arm a little too tightly, there was a different kind of panic in his eyes.
“I don’t know how to find the bathroom,” the man said, terror-stricken. “Curtis,” with salt and pepper hair, was in his late 50s.
“It’s just around the corner – through those doors and to the right.” I hoped to speed-walk past him, but his grip on my arm only tightened.
“I can’t do that,” he said, his voice rising to a near-shout.
His upper lip was shaky with emotion. The only clue that his problem wasn’t some type of unusual neurological defect was the fact that he had way more muscles than you’d expect to see on a man his age. “Just got out of prison?” I said.
He gave a sharp nod. “Twenty years in a cell. I walked down one corridor. That’s all. For over 20 years.” He said it again, this time shouting it: “I can’t find the bathroom.”
My mind struggled to grasp his last 20 years. All the changes in the world. All the ways in which we maneuver through our lives -– simple things that he’d never done. He’d become a man no longer able to even follow an easy task like going through the doors and turning right. At his age, to have been so restricted for so long in prison, he’d undoubtedly committed a truly vile and violent act against another person.
But now he is, as we say in the healthcare business, ours.
He is a man who is unemployable, with multiple chronic health problems, and most likely -– even without being confronted with all he cannot do — with serious anger management and impulse-control issues. He is in our town with nowhere to stay, nowhere to go and no ability to get there.
“I’ll walk you there,” I said, and wondered, as we walked the few feet to the bathroom doors, which way he would go when he left the clinic.
He wasn’t mentally ill. He didn’t have HIV. He had high blood pressure and diabetes and high cholesterol and prostate problems that might turn out to be prostate cancer. He had no idea what tests had been done in prison, or what pills or doses he’d taken for the last many years. After 20 years in a prison with years of treatment for chronic health problems, he had no summary — not even a health card or a discharge print-out.
We did what we could. We picked random pills and doses to start him on, since he’d been without medicines for several days already. He had no money for a co-pay so we gave him what we could out of our medicine closet. We told him to come back in two days so we could check how he was doing.
But as he left to sleep on a sidewalk in San Francisco, we all –- myself, the nurse, the staff -– wondered the same thing. He had no food, no place, no ties to anyone, no way to get money. At all. So how long would it be before he hurt someone, just so he could get back to prison?
Because, odds are, he will.
What is it really like to leave prison? Watch this interview with Dr. Doug Price-Hansen to hear some real-life details of the circumstances and issues that prisoners can face on release.
Prison Churn and Homeless Churn
California incarcerates more of its population than any other state, with roughly one in 1,000 Californians sent to prison each year. As of August 2009, there were 166,569 Californians in prison. And these numbers exclude jail. Prison is very different from jail. Jail is local, for smaller offenses, or as a holding place until verdicts are handed out. Prison is for felons, more serious offenses, and, generally, for much longer sentences. But our state’s prison system is far from static. Except for a very tiny minority, every single prisoner eventually will come back to our neighborhoods. Generally speaking, more than 100,000 people are released, and more than 100,000 people are incarcerated every single year. Our prison system released in excess of 130,000 people into our neighborhoods in 2009 alone.
The logistics represented by those numbers is mind-boggling. That’s basically the same number of people as the entire population of Humboldt County, or the entire city of Concord. Here’s what getting out is like. You’re not told exactly when you’ll be able to leave. Your family -– if you still have any relationships left -– can’t know either. No one can know. For security reasons, no one is told, ever, an exact date of release.
One day, the door is unlocked. Only if you have certain designated types of mental illness, or have HIV that’s being treated, are you given any pills when you leave. And even then you’re only given a 30-day supply as you go.
The California prison system is now the largest provider of mental health care in the state. Despite that, most studies show that a large number of seriously mentally ill prisoners are not diagnosed and treated while incarcerated. But the prisoners who are being treated for mental illness are now mandated to be given a case management assessment and an appointment for follow-up prior to release. The prison system’s own study shows that just one visit from a case manager prior to release is highly effective at reducing recidivism and increasing compliance with follow-up appointments. But the very same study also showed that no visits at all are being done in almost 50 percent of cases, even though staff were hired to perform them, and it’s mandated by state law. No one knows why they’re not being done.
The California prison population has aged, with four out of 10 age 40 or over, with one in seven prisoners 50 or older. Many have multiple health problems. As the healthcare costs for prisoners have soared, there have been reports of expedited releases for prisoners with complex medical problems.
But no matter what your age, even if you’re a person with diabetes requiring insulin, or if you usually take many pills, or recently had surgery, or are being treated for an infection — you’re not given even one dose when you leave. You’re not given any appointments, or even any chance to make an appointment. Even if you’re a diabetic, you may not be allowed to eat breakfast. Despite prison health services, collectively, commanding a $2 billion annual budget, no one, not even the people with mental illness or HIV, is given even a piece of paper on release with any medical information on it.
And, of course, when you leave prison, you don’t have health insurance.
After release, all your health issues will be, without a doubt, sooner or later the problem of whatever county you’re headed toward. Why the county? Even if you had a permanent disability, and federally paid or subsidized Medi-Cal or Medicare coverage for reasons of poverty or disability, when you are imprisoned, all your coverage is automatically canceled. Clearly, no one thinks a prisoner should be drawing benefits while behind bars. The problem, however, comes when a person is released. There is no automatic restoration of that same coverage, even for permanent disability. The county alone will bear the burden of your medical care upon your release. And, often the county may wind up paying for it forever more. Having your coverage re-instated is almost always a long and complex process, requiring multiple visits, and a high level of literacy and persistence. And the reinstatement process, it goes without saying, requires an address.
There is no reason why the prison system cannot be as efficient at reinstating coverage as it is at canceling that same coverage. If there are doubts about whether qualifying conditions still exist, there is also no reason why coverage could not be reinstated upon release for a probationary period of, say, six months. It would then lapse unless the released prisoner was seen and assessed by an outside provider. Such a process would be a powerful incentive for released prisoners to maintain preventive care. And for counties to be able to provide care instead of post-release crisis-level, unreimbursed emergency room visits.
This post was written by:
Spot.us - who has written 26 posts on Daily Casserole.
http://www.dailycasserole.com/2011/02/02/homeless-triangle-part-1-san-francisco-los-angeles-and-prison/
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Safety tips for kids walking to & from school and activities:
Safety for all children is our mutual goal - Safety tips for kids walking to & from school and activities:
Recent incidents including those involving children as they walk to and from school and their activities, remind us all to stay aware of good ways to maximize kids safety. These child safety tips are provided to remind parents and caregivers that regular discussions with your children is a great parenting practice. Although there are some days where you may doubt it, your children really do listen to you. They rely on you more than anyone else to guide them and their safety. It is not about scaring them, it is about educating them on an ongoing basis about the best ways they can be as safe as possible.
Events on Jan. 19th and 26th included a suspect(s) approaching/annoying a young boy and a young girl in separate incidents as they walked home from school and a park in Hidden Hills and Calabasas. Sketches of the wanted suspect(s), related vehicles, and description of events can be found on www.lasd.org or more directly at this link:
(http://sheriff.lacounty.gov/wps/portal/lasd/media/detail/?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/lasd+content/lasd+site/home/home+top+stories/suspect+wanted+for+approaching+annoying+children+in+hidden+hills+and+calabasas)
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (http://www.missingkids.com ) offers the following safety tips for parents to discuss with their youngsters:
* Travel with a friend, or better yet, a group of friends when riding your bike or walking to or from school or other destinations.
* If a stranger offers you a ride somewhere, say no, and run away. Adults should define "stranger" and give safety tip examples to help youth, especially young ones, know what you mean.
* If someone follows you on foot, get away as quickly as you can. Go to someone's house you know, or run to other people, or just run away.
* If someone is following you in a car, turn around and go in the opposite direction or take a path where a car would not go.
* Never leave school or any other extracurricular activity or event with someone who makes you feel uncomfortable. Moms or dads should tell their youngster that it is okay in these circumstances to not ride home, but that also means adults should have an established communications method along with these safety tip guidelines so that the kid does not end up stranded or alone.
* If a stranger tells you that there is an emergency or that a family member is hurt or that a pet has been in an accident, always check with your mom or dad or other trusted adults. This is a common trick used by many molesters or kidnappers.
* For more information about safety tips contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department www.lasd.org , your local police or sheriff's station, or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at http://www.missingkids.com
More safety tips:
* Adults should establish "safe houses" where kids feel comfortable in knocking on their door at any time a situation warrants it. Be sure to get approval from the neighbors/homeowners first before designating a home as a "safe house." If possible, have a neighborhood safety tip meeting and have residents agree to watch after one another.
* Parents should be cautious about blatant use of a child's name on a back pack or jacket. Kids sometimes believe that a person can't be a stranger if they know them by name, when the reality is that their name was easily readable on their attire or the individual heard a youngster's name mentioned.
* Adults should understand that boys are at just as greatest of risk as girls. It is a common safety tip misconception that child molesters or perpetrators are typically men and seek only girls. Molesters come in all ages and both genders, and their victims can be of either sex.
* Parents should begin reinforcing these safety tips as soon as a kid is old enough to understand, and above all, ensure that their child feels comfortable enough in discussing these issues, their concerns or fears, or any potentially inappropriate events that have possibly transpired. Awareness of these safety tips can help kids be less susceptible to any stranger dangers.
Recent incidents including those involving children as they walk to and from school and their activities, remind us all to stay aware of good ways to maximize kids safety. These child safety tips are provided to remind parents and caregivers that regular discussions with your children is a great parenting practice. Although there are some days where you may doubt it, your children really do listen to you. They rely on you more than anyone else to guide them and their safety. It is not about scaring them, it is about educating them on an ongoing basis about the best ways they can be as safe as possible.
Events on Jan. 19th and 26th included a suspect(s) approaching/annoying a young boy and a young girl in separate incidents as they walked home from school and a park in Hidden Hills and Calabasas. Sketches of the wanted suspect(s), related vehicles, and description of events can be found on www.lasd.org or more directly at this link:
(http://sheriff.lacounty.gov/wps/portal/lasd/media/detail/?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/lasd+content/lasd+site/home/home+top+stories/suspect+wanted+for+approaching+annoying+children+in+hidden+hills+and+calabasas)
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (http://www.missingkids.com ) offers the following safety tips for parents to discuss with their youngsters:
* Travel with a friend, or better yet, a group of friends when riding your bike or walking to or from school or other destinations.
* If a stranger offers you a ride somewhere, say no, and run away. Adults should define "stranger" and give safety tip examples to help youth, especially young ones, know what you mean.
* If someone follows you on foot, get away as quickly as you can. Go to someone's house you know, or run to other people, or just run away.
* If someone is following you in a car, turn around and go in the opposite direction or take a path where a car would not go.
* Never leave school or any other extracurricular activity or event with someone who makes you feel uncomfortable. Moms or dads should tell their youngster that it is okay in these circumstances to not ride home, but that also means adults should have an established communications method along with these safety tip guidelines so that the kid does not end up stranded or alone.
* If a stranger tells you that there is an emergency or that a family member is hurt or that a pet has been in an accident, always check with your mom or dad or other trusted adults. This is a common trick used by many molesters or kidnappers.
* For more information about safety tips contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department www.lasd.org , your local police or sheriff's station, or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at http://www.missingkids.com
More safety tips:
* Adults should establish "safe houses" where kids feel comfortable in knocking on their door at any time a situation warrants it. Be sure to get approval from the neighbors/homeowners first before designating a home as a "safe house." If possible, have a neighborhood safety tip meeting and have residents agree to watch after one another.
* Parents should be cautious about blatant use of a child's name on a back pack or jacket. Kids sometimes believe that a person can't be a stranger if they know them by name, when the reality is that their name was easily readable on their attire or the individual heard a youngster's name mentioned.
* Adults should understand that boys are at just as greatest of risk as girls. It is a common safety tip misconception that child molesters or perpetrators are typically men and seek only girls. Molesters come in all ages and both genders, and their victims can be of either sex.
* Parents should begin reinforcing these safety tips as soon as a kid is old enough to understand, and above all, ensure that their child feels comfortable enough in discussing these issues, their concerns or fears, or any potentially inappropriate events that have possibly transpired. Awareness of these safety tips can help kids be less susceptible to any stranger dangers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
