By Jenifer Warren, Times Staff Writer October 5, 2006
SACRAMENTO — With California's jam-packed prisons nearly out of room for more felons, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday proclaimed a state of emergency, an unusual move that could allow the transfer of inmates as soon as next month to other states without their consent.
The governor said he was taking the extraordinary step because teeming conditions have created a health risk and "extreme peril" for officers and inmates at 29 of the state's 33 prisons.
(click above to read the rest of the LA Times article)
By Michele McPhee, Boston Herald Wednesday, May 31, 2006
The Massachusetts Parole Board wants to make it mandatory for all violent offenders to be released into supervised settings, a move Mayor Thomas M. Menino said could be a deterrent to convicts going back to lives of crime. “No one should be getting out of prison without supervision,” Menino said yesterday.
“We do not want any of these convicts going back to their old ways. Without supervision, without help, guidance, that happens,” he said. Massachusetts does not mandate postrelease supervision for the more than 20,000 cons being released each year, a legislative lapse that leaves the most dangerous population of people unsupervised,Maureen Walsh, chairwoman of the state’s parole board, said in a recent interview. In 2005, 7,923 prisoners were released, but just 2,177 are now under parole supervision, according to statistics obtained by the Herald. Walsh said there are roughly 2,200 convicts who served time for violent crimes being released each year and more than half of those offenders opt to serve their entire sentence rather than face supervision by parole officers. Gov. Mitt Romney has filed a bill to take away that option. One convict who opted to stay behind bars for an extra year rather than pay $55 a month to be paroled was Joseph Gomes, 39. Gomes, of Dorchester, was released from prison in April after serving roughly nine years behind bars for armed robbery and other charges. “I didn’t want to be under supervision. I’ve been under supervision since I was 13 years old,” Gomes told the Herald this week. Since his release, he has been having trouble landing a job, Gomes said. The state, for its part, has substantially increased its budget to help people like Gomes re-enter society. In fiscal year 2006, the state received more than $1.7 million in federal funds for re-entry programs, a huge leap over grant money awarded in years past. In 2003, the state received just $114,051 to help convicts after their release from prison, according to Donald Giancioppo, executive director the Massachusetts Parole Board. Yesterday the Herald reported that 171 killers convicted of second-degree murder have been paroled since 2002.
by JEREMY SCAHILL [from the June 5, 2006 issue]The Nation
Tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims remain without homes. The environment is devastated. People are disenfranchised. Financial resources, desperate residents are told, are scarce. But at least New Orleans has a Wal-Mart parking lot serving as a FEMA Disaster Recovery Center with perhaps the tightest security of any parking lot in the world. That's thanks to the more than $30 million Washington has shelled out to the Blackwater USA security firm since its men deployed after Katrina hit.. Under contract with the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Federal Protective Service, Blackwater's men are ostensibly protecting federal reconstruction projects for FEMA.
Documents show that the government paid Blackwater $950 a day for each of its guards in the area. Interviewed by The Nation last September, several of the company's guards stationed in New Orleans said they were being paid $350 a day. That would have left Blackwater with $600 per man, per day to cover lodging, ammo, other overhead--and profits.
Shortly after the hurricane hit, Blackwater "launched a helicopter and crew with no contract, no one paying us, that went down to New Orleans," says company vice chairman Cofer Black. "We saved some 150 people that otherwise wouldn't have been saved. And, as a result of that, we've had a very positive experience." Indeed. It was only days after the company arrived that it started reeling in lucrative deals.
While we are so sad to see our Development Director, Sitara Nieves, and our Southern Regional Coordinator, Tamika Middleton, leave their paid positions with Critical Resistance; we are thrilled for them and their new opportunities in graduate school. Both Tamika and Sitara will continue to organize with Critical Resistance as members, and we are looking forward to their continued involvement with CR and the opportunity CR has to hire two new staffers. Please circulate this announcement far and wide. Much thanks!
TWO JOB OPENINGS WITH CRITICAL RESISTANCE:
* National Development and Communications Director
By Alan Cooperman Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, April 29, 2006; A02
The Justice Department plans to set aside cellblocks at up to half a dozen federal prisons for an ambitious pilot program to prepare inmates for release. But it has produced an outcry by saying that it wants a private group to counsel the prisoners according to a single faith.
The plans do not specify what that faith must be, but they appear to rule out secular counseling or programs that offer inmates guidance in a variety of faiths.
The Washington-based advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State charged in a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that the Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons has tailored its bidding requirements to fit one particular program: an immersion in evangelical Christianity offered by Charles W. Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries.
Outlining 10 ways in which the Bureau of Prisons' request for proposals from private contractors dovetails with Prison Fellowship's "InnerChange" program, Americans United contended that the plan is unconstitutional and urged Gonzales to withdraw it. Gonzales has not responded to the April 19 letter, Americans United said.
Independent experts on constitutional law asked by The Washington Post to review the bidding documents also questioned the plan's legality.
"There are all sorts of gray areas in the interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. This doesn't seem to be in the gray area," said Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky. "This seems to favor religion over non-religion, and some religions over other religions. By wanting to fund only one religion, I think it runs afoul of what even the most conservative justices would be willing to tolerate."
Douglas Laycock of the University of Texas School of Law said he believes that "you can run religious programs in federal prisons" and that they "are highly promising." But he said the plan for taxpayer-funded counseling in a single faith, without any obvious provision for a secular alternative, is "problematic."
"One of the questions you have to ask is, 'Does the regular prison program do anything comparable to prepare prisoners for reentry?' " Laycock said. "I don't know the answer, but I've read that most prisons don't do much of anything. So in fact there may be no secular equivalent, and if the only way to get preparation for release is to go into a 'single-faith' program, that seems to be coercion of religion."
Individuals seeking care through Medicaid beginning on July 1 will be required under federal law to show proof of U.S. citizenship -- such as a birth certificate, passport or another form of identification -- the Boston Globe reports. The requirement was included in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which President Bush signed into law earlier this year. The provision's intent is to prevent undocumented immigrants from claiming to be citizens in order to receive benefits only provided to legal residents, according to the Globe. Under federal law, undocumented immigrants can receive only emergency care through Medicaid. Some health care specialists are concerned that with the new citizenship requirements, many Medicaid beneficiaries, including those who are mentally disabled or homeless, will not be able to produce documentation and will have difficulty receiving health services.
IMMIGRANTS HIT THE STREETS Immigration News Briefs (INB)
Between Mar. 20 and 25, tens of thousands of immigrants demonstrated in cities and towns across the US to protest anti- immigrant legislation being considered by the Senate and to demand legalization for out-of-status immigrants [see INB 3/18/06]. On Mar. 20, some 1,200 immigrants and supporters rallied outside the statehouse in Trenton, New Jersey, to protest a proposal being considered by the US Congress which would apply tougher enforcement measures against out-of-status immigrants. Southern New Jersey coordinator Ramon Hernandez said more than 25 local businesses and farmers helped pay for buses to take people to the rally. [Home News Tribune Online (East Brunswick) 3/21/06; Press of Atlantic City 3/21/06] On Mar. 22, more than 200 immigrants and supporters marched in Providence, Rhode Island, to the office of Senator Lincoln Chafee, asking him to support comprehensive immigration reform. [Eyewitnessnewstv.com (East Providence) 3/22/06]
500,000 Pack Streets to Protest Immigration Bills The rally, part of a massive mobilization of immigrants and their supporters, may be the largest L.A. has seen. By Teresa Watanabe and Hector Becerra Times Staff Writers
March 26, 2006
A crowd estimated by police at more than 500,000 boisterously marched in Los Angeles on Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall along the U.S.' southern border.
Spirited but peaceful marchers - ordinary immigrants alongside labor, religious and civil rights groups - stretched more than 20 blocks along Spring Street, Broadway and Main Street to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting, "Sí se puede!" (Yes we can!).
Attendance at the demonstration far surpassed the number of people who protested against the Vietnam War and Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that sought to deny public benefits to undocumented migrants but was struck down by the courts. Police said there were no arrests or injuries except for a few cases of exhaustion.
At a time when Congress prepares to crack down further on illegal immigration and self-appointed militias patrol the U.S. border to stem the flow, Saturday's rally represented a massive response, part of what immigration advocates are calling an unprecedented effort to mobilize immigrants and their supporters nationwide.
stressed