Thousands of sick federal prisoners sought release as Covid-19 spread. Nearly all were denied.
It is outrageous that authorities create false hope. They create and announce this mechanism, yet damn near NONE of such requests are granted.
The fact is that this is bullshit job preservation. For every 1 person arrested, 29 people benefit financially. Many are prison guards and probation officers. They are not about to let large numbers of ex offenders get out of the system!
Excerpts from the Article:
Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Marie Neba feared dying in federal prison. The 56-year-old had stage 4 cancer — and three children waiting for her at home. “Right now, I can barely walk around because of generalized body pain and feet numbness,” she wrote, as she struggled through chemotherapy earlier this year. “The way things are going regarding my treatments here at Carswell can lead me to my grave.”
But last year when she tried to get a rare compassionate release from Carswell medical prison in North Texas, the warden denied her request. When Covid-19 hit, she tried again with a fresh request on March 30 — and this time the warden ignored her altogether.
In total, 349 women, about a quarter of the prison’s inmates, asked for compassionate release during the first three months of the pandemic. The warden denied or failed to respond to 346 of them, including Neba, who was in prison for Medicare fraud — even though federal guidelines allow compassionate release for terminally ill prisoners if they do not pose a danger to the community. In the months that followed, more than 500 women at Carswell fell ill with Covid-19 and six died. Neba was one of them.
Data recently obtained by The Marshall Project underscores what attorneys, advocates and experts have long suspected: As the pandemic ramped up, federal prison wardens denied or ignored more than 98 percent of compassionate release requests, including many from medically vulnerable prisoners like Neba. Wardens are the first line of review; ultimately, compassionate release petitions must be approved by a judge. Though the Bureau of Prisons has previously posted information about the number of people let out on compassionate release, it wasn’t clear until now just how many prisoners applied for it or how frequently wardens denied these requests despite widespread calls to reduce the prison population in the face of the pandemic.
Of the 10,940 federal prisoners who applied for compassionate release from March through May, wardens approved 156. Some wardens, including those at Seagoville in Texas and Oakdale in Louisiana, did not respond to any request in that time frame, according to the data, while others responded only to deny them all. Higher-ups in Washington, D.C., reviewed 84 of the warden approvals and overturned all but 11. Time and again, the only way prisoners were able to win compassionate release was to take the bureau to court to fight the wardens’ denials.
For dozens of people stuck behind bars, the virus has proved fatal; so far, 134 federal prisoners have died of Covid-19, and more than 15,800 have fallen ill. A statement from the Bureau of Prisons did not address specific questions, including why some wardens failed to respond to release requests. The wardens referred questions to the bureau.
There are currently two main ways to get out of federal prison early. One is known as home confinement, when prisoners are allowed to finish their sentences at home or in halfway houses. They’re still considered in custody, and the decision to let them go is entirely up to the Bureau of Prisons, with no legal recourse in the courts. At the start of the pandemic, a federal coronavirus relief bill expanded the eligibility criteria, and the bureau has since sent more than 7,700 prisoners to home confinement, the equivalent of 4.6 percent of the prison population at the start of the pandemic.
The other way to get out of prison early is compassionate release, in which a judge agrees to reduce a prisoner’s sentence to time served. But first, the prisoner must ask the warden for approval. After a warden denies the request or 30 days pass with no response, the prisoner can take the case to court and ask for a judge to approve it. So far, more than 1,600 people have been let out on compassionate release since the start of the pandemic — many of them despite the bureau’s best efforts to thwart them.
“Initially, they just opposed them all,” said Kevin Ring, president of the prisoner advocacy group FAMM. “They thought Covid-19 was no reason to let people out. They said prison was going to be safer.”
The Bureau of Prisons seems to have decided to rely on home confinement — where the bureau retains control over the person — rather than compassionate release, which reduces the sentence to zero, Ring said.
“They think their job is to keep people in prison, not to let people out,” he said. “Jailers gonna jail.”
Officials were slow to turn to home confinement, which didn’t ramp up until May, and were resistant to compassionate release even as the virus spread through the prison system and prisoners began filing lawsuits over the bureau’s refusal to send people home. At Elkton, an early hot spot in Ohio where nine prisoners died of Covid-19 and more than 900 got sick beginning in March, the warden denied 866 out of 867 requests for compassionate release between March 1 and May 31.
In California, the prison at Terminal Island became the site of a major outbreak, with 694 prisoners testing positive by the end of May. But the warden only approved five of the 256 compassionate release requests filed by that time.
At Butner, a four-prison complex in North Carolina where 25 prisoners and one correctional officer died in May and June, officials approved 29 of 524 requests by the end of May.
At some prisons, the low number of requests raised questions about the bureau’s recordkeeping. For example, at the Oakdale complex, an early hot spot in Louisiana where eight prisoners have died, officials reported just 95 compassionate release applications by the end of May out of a population of more than 1,700. The warden took action on none of them. At the same time, the prison racked up 191 positive cases.
Likewise at Forrest City, a two-prison complex in Arkansas where more than 700 men fell ill, officials reported only three applications by the end of May. All three were approved.
For more than a dozen institutions, including all 11 of the privately run federal prisons, the bureau listed no compassionate release requests at all.
“The numbers seem incorrect,” said Somil Trivedi, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who has helped coordinate lawsuits against federal prisons. “I just don’t feel like they’re counting them all. This has to be an undercount because of the informal nature of the process.”
From the Carswell prison, Marie Neba wrote letters to U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen complaining about poor medical care and her worsening health as the pandemic continued. She worried about who would support her 21-year-old daughter in caring for her 9-year-old twin boys if she died in prison. Her husband, who was indicted in the same Medicare fraud case, fled the country for their native Cameroon to avoid trial.
Federal guidelines say that terminal illness, including metastatic cancer, is grounds for compassionate release. But after the Carswell warden ignored Neba’s request and she took her plea to court in April, federal prosecutors fought it aggressively, saying she didn’t deserve a 70-year reduction in her 75-year sentence. They argued, despite widespread reports to the contrary, that the Bureau of Prisons was doing its best to limit the spread of disease behind bars.
In April, government lawyers claimed Neba’s health wasn’t really deteriorating. As evidence of that, prosecutor Catherine Wagner produced a video showing Neba walking on a treadmill and using small weights in the medical center gym, pointing out that she was well enough to be “sweating and walking unassisted.” Neba’s lawyer said she was only following her doctor’s orders.
“He told her to exercise and eat right,” Zachary Newland said. Making sure she took care of herself, Newland hoped, would keep her alive and free of Covid-19 until she could come home.
Wagner and Department of Justice officials declined to comment.
The bureau took nearly three months to respond to The Marshall Project’s request for data on applications for compassionate release and how wardens responded, so the information that the bureau produced only goes through the end of May.
But more people won compassionate release in recent months than at the start of the pandemic. The Marshall Project’s tracking of publicly posted data shows that release numbers grew slowly in April, May and June before nearly doubling in August, when close to 500 people were freed. But those figures dropped in September, and attorneys and experts say that prison officials are still denying releases and that prosecutors are typically opposing the requests in court.
Another recent case in which both the bureau and prosecutors opposed release was that of Jordan Jucutan, a former Army Reserve recruiter sentenced to 28 months in prison for claiming bonuses for soldiers he didn’t really recruit. He was obese, asthmatic and needed two inhalers, but prosecutors claimed in court that he was “actually much safer” behind bars than he would be if he were released, because his home county — Thurston County in Washington — had more coronavirus cases than the prison did. A federal judge found that argument unpersuasive: “It makes little sense to compare a prison in Oregon with a whole county in another state,” Judge Ramona Manglona wrote, before approving Jucutan’s release from FCI Sheridan in September.
Even in the rare instances in which prison officials agree that someone deserves compassionate release, advocates say, they’re still not initiating the process; instead, it’s up to the prisoners to do that themselves. “We are not aware of a single BOP-initiated motion for compassionate release based on heightened risk of severe illness from COVID-19 infection,“ said Davina Chen, a senior federal defender in Los Angeles. Instead, the 1,600-plus prisoners granted compassionate release this year applied with the help of lawyers; a few filed requests in court on their own. Defense lawyers have a word to describe bureau-initiated compassionate release cases: “unicorns.”
After months of warning prison officials that she was high-risk, Neba tested positive for the coronavirus in July. By August, prison medical staff thought she had recovered. But then, she developed shortness of breath. She was sent to a hospital in Fort Worth, where she was shackled to her bed and told that she still had Covid-19. There, a nurse made a video call on FaceTime to show Neba to her 21-year-old daughter, Claudel Tilong, whom she hadn’t seen since March, when the federal prison system cut off visits due to the pandemic. As Tilong struggled to recognize her dying mother, now a frail woman with ashen skin and vacant eyes, a correctional officer in the room interrupted and ended the call. Tilong recalled the words: “It’s not allowed.”
With his client in worsening condition, Neba’s lawyer again begged federal prosecutors to stop opposing her release. “This is not about Neba anymore,” Newland wrote in an Aug. 17 email. “She’s dying and cannot speak to even make peace with her children if she wanted to do so.”
Still, they refused. So on Aug. 26, Newland begged the judge to end Neba’s sentence. Hours after filing that request, he learned it was too late.
Neba had died a day earlier. A nurse had called Tilong on FaceTime and, sitting in a parked car, Tilong and her 9-year-old twin brothers watched their comatose mother take her last breaths with ventilator tubes in her nose.
Sick prisoner wrote 17 letters pleading to be freed. Covid silenced him.
He was given an eleven year sentence, not a death sentence. NOBODY should die from such neglect. Authorities create this “emergency out” mechanism, but only a handful are granted! It’s BULLSHIT!
What they don’t tell you, but I know from my many contacts, is: As soon as they are out of camera range, MANY prison staff remove their masks! Yes, they are that stupid.
READ: Thousands of sick federal prisoners sought release as Covid-19 spread. Nearly all were denied.
Excerpts from the Article:
Waylon Young Bird, a 52-year-old federal prisoner with severe kidney disease, did not give up after his request for a compassionate release because of COVID-19 risks was denied in June. He wrote a letter to his judge that same week pleading for mercy. Then another a day or two later.
“I’m writing again because this morning, around 10 a.m., an inmate next to me said, ‘It’s here, Chief,’” wrote Young Bird, a Native American from South Dakota.
“It’s official now, that the first case of coronavirus is here at Springfield, Mo., medical center.”
Young Bird had been incarcerated at the facility since September 2019 on an 11-year sentence for distributing methamphetamine. The institution houses roughly 840 inmates with severe medical problems.
As the summer dragged on and the coronavirus rampaged across middle America, Young Bird kept writing to U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange.
On June 14, he wrote that he feared the virus will soon start spreading, he didn’t want to die behind bars and he longed to see his disabled sister and his four kids “who need me.” On Aug. 7, he told the judge that he found out his “aunty mom,” Joann Young Bird, had died and how he wished to attend her funeral.
And finally, in a letter dated Oct. 28, he wrote that dozens of inmates in his unit had tested positive but he was, so far, one of the lucky ones.
“I’m afraid I may be infected by the time you read this letter,” he wrote. “Please as a compassionate judge, can you help me thru this situation.” Young Bird tested positive for the virus the next day. He died exactly a week later, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
“I find it very hard to comprehend,” said one of his daughters, Casina Brewer, 26. “I just feel like he was ignored.”
Three other inmates from the Springfield facility died on the same day as Young Bird. At least seven have succumbed to the virus this month alone, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
Such an outbreak at a federal institution housing seriously ill inmates represents a nightmare scenario, experts say. “We have very vulnerable people in one place, and my experience is prison medical centers do not operate with the same level of infection control that we find in community hospitals,” said Dr. Homer Venters, former chief medical officer of the New York City jail system. “There can be devastating consequences.”
Venters, who now works as an expert consultant on health services in correctional settings, has inspected 18 state and federal prisons since the pandemic struck. The Springfield facility was not among them.
He said it’s critical for prison medical facilities to be able to isolate infected patients and still provide them with a high level of care. Yet he’s found that prisons often provide insufficient Covid-19 screening for inmates and staffers and fail to provide the proper training and personal protective equipment needed to ensure a safe environment.
“These are things that were on everyone’s radar in community hospitals by April, but my experience is prison hospitals even today are not functioning with the high level of infection control and PPE they need to protect high-risk patients,” added Venters, who is the president of Community Oriented Correctional Health Systems, a nonprofit that works to improve health care behind bars.
Since the start of the pandemic, the agency has released 17,530 inmates to home confinement.
Federal inmates can also get out of prison early through a compassionate release, which is authorized by a judge and amounts to a sentence reduction to time served. But prisoners must first file a request with the institution’s warden. After a warden denies the request or 30 days pass with no response, the inmate can then petition their sentencing judge.
According to data compiled by the Marshall Project, federal prison wardens denied or ignored more than 98 percent of compassionate release requests.
“Most of the people who are high risk in prison are still in prison,” Venters said. Young Bird wasn’t the only Springfield inmate to die from Covid-19 after being denied a request to be released from the virus-hit facility. At least two other inmates who were also suffering from kidney disease, Torrick Lyles and David Cross, also succumbed to the coronavirus after their bids were denied, according to court documents.
Young Bird was arrested in March 2018 when, during a traffic stop on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, officers found 10 grams of meth hidden in his sock in eight baggies. A federal jury convicted him on one count of conspiracy to distribute and one count of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine.
Young Bird was on dialysis for his kidney disease, his heart operated at half the normal rate and one of his toes was amputated due to diabetes, the documents say. The warden denied his request on the grounds that his condition was not terminal and his life expectancy was greater than 18 months.
As the Covid-19 crisis worsened, Young Bird petitioned the judge who had sentenced him. In his court motion, Young Bird’s attorney argued that his serious health conditions, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, amounted to an “extraordinary and compelling reason” to reduce his sentence to time served or impose a period of home confinement.
By then, Young Bird had written a letter to his hometown newspaper apologizing to those people in the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe that “I hurt through my drug and alcohol use.”
“I was addicted to methamphetamine (crystal meth) and alcohol, a legal drug,” Young Bird wrote. “Both are very hard to get off, there in the free world. I have disappointed a lot of my people, and carry a lot of shame and regret.”
“I’m very saddened by his death,” the judge added. “It’s terrible how the virus has affected inmates both in federal and in state custody, and I just wish Mr. Young Bird’s family the very best.”
Young Bird wrote Lange a total of 17 letters starting in mid-March. The prolific letter writer never mentioned, however, what he did shortly before he was arrested. Following the death of his sister, Young Bird hosted a large dinner in the South Dakota town of Dupree to honor her memory. It ended with an extraordinary act of generosity, his family members said. “He bought blankets, sweaters, socks, dreamcatchers — anything you could think of,” said his aunt Jo Lynn Little Wounded. “He just passed them all out to the homeless people in the community. It was something I’ll never forget.”
After Young Bird died, Little Wounded wanted to do the same thing to honor him.
But the virus was spiking in North Dakota. There would be no big dinner. No giveaway.
About 100 family members gathered for a graveside service last Saturday, where three singers from a nearby Indian reservation sang a prayer song before Young Bird’s body was lowered into the ground.
Jail video shows detention deputy repeatedly punching female inmate, BSO review finds ‘no misconduct’
This is the sort of BULLSHIT cover up which is so infuriating. There is NO excuse for what this guard did to the inmate.
The other side of the story is:
Excerpts from the article:
Video of an inmate taking repeated blows to the head inside a Broward County jail cell. The incident happened nearly a year ago, but it has not been exposed until now. 7’s Karen Hensel has this exclusive investigation: Beaten Behind Bars.
It was Dec. 22, 2019 inside the North Broward Bureau Jail in Pompano Beach. In surveillance video obtained exclusively by 7 Investigates, Broward Sheriff’s Office Detention Deputy Wayne Mayberry is seen entering the screen with a female inmate.
Chet Epperson, former police chief: “Look, the video is very concerning.” The deputy and inmate appear to be grabbing each other’s clothes as she’s pushed into her cell.
This is what the video captures next. Deputy Mayberry swings at the inmate. He then punches her 13 times in rapid succession, using both his right and left fists before throwing her on the floor.
The video ends outside the cell after another deputy closes the door and Mayberry bends over one hand over his eye.
Chet Epperson: “We have a rather large correctional officer, who is striking the head of a very small woman.” A woman who is just 4 feet, 11 inches tall.
We showed the video and incident report to Chet Epperson, a former police chief. Chet Epperson: “Even prior to going into the cell, and so I’m looking at the back of the deputy, you can see his right arm up, so it looks like he’s going to strike someone.”
Deputy Mayberry’s report offers a glimpse into what, he said, happened prior to what we see on video. After a verbal exchange about a washcloth, he said the inmate “became belligerent.” When she didn’t comply with orders “to go back to her room,” the deputy stated he “took hold of her right shoulder sleeve.”
That’s when Mayberry wrote she “forcefully struck me in the face and throat, causing my eyeglasses to be knocked off my face” and yelled “I’m going to kill you!”
And two other inmates gave witness statements saying she went after the deputy, one writing she “hit him in the face multiple times.” Chet Epperson: “If I’m escorting the person into the cell, the simple thing to do is just to push that inmate into the cell and close the door. You try to avoid force at all costs.” Instead, at the cell door, Mayberry wrote she “spit in my face, eyes and mouth” … “gouged something into my right eye” and said he was “in fear of my life.”
The deputy said he “started hitting her with a closed hammer fist as fast as I could not knowing what I was hitting.”
Chet Epperson: “At a minimum, at a minimum, there needed — if there has not been — an investigation, an internal investigation, that should have taken place.”
BSO tells 7News they conducted a thorough review of the incident, including the surveillance video, and in a statement said: “Multiple reviews of the incident, including a preliminary review by BSO’s division of internal affairs, identified no misconduct by Deputy Mayberry…”
BSO provided us these pictures and said “Deputy Mayberry suffered serious injuries and required medical treatment at a hospital.”
The 22-year-old woman is accused of hurting another corrections officer in March at the same jail, a facility primarily for mentally ill and special needs inmates. That case is being handled in Broward mental health court.
But the inmate was not charged in the incident with Deputy Mayberry. BSO says whether to charge is at the discretion of the deputy, and it’s not uncommon for deputies assaulted by inmates to decline to file criminal charges because of mental health concerns at this jail.
Full BSO statement (7News has redacted the inmate’s name since she was not charged in the incident):
“On Dec. 22, 2019, Broward Sheriff’s Office Detention Deputy Wayne Mayberry was attacked by a female inmate, [redacted], while he was performing his duties at the North Broward Bureau. The inmate repeatedly scratched and hit Deputy Mayberry in the face and throat, spit in his face and gouged something into one of his eyes. Deputy Mayberry suffered serious injuries and required medical treatment at a hospital.
After this incident occurred, BSO’s Department of Detention conducted a thorough review of the matter, as is policy in all use of force. Supervisors reviewed surveillance camera footage, conducted interviews and took photographs of Deputy Mayberry and inmate [redacted]. Inmate [redacted] refused to speak with a BSO lieutenant about the incident. Multiple reviews of the incident, including a preliminary review by BSO’s Division of Internal Affairs, identified no misconduct by Deputy Mayberry as the level of force used by him was an objectively reasonable response to the sudden attack he defended himself from and therefore no Internal Affairs investigation was warranted.
Generally speaking, in these types of incidents and based on the totality of the circumstances, it is at the discretion of the deputy whether to file an additional charge against an inmate. It is not uncommon for deputies assaulted by inmates housed in the North Broward Bureau due to mental health concerns to decline criminal charges.”
Watch the Video and The Whole Story:
Report on death of Black inmate who pleaded for help rips corrections, health care provider
I have seen far too many stories like this one. The extensive Investigative Report is a waste of time, ink, and paper. Why? READ
Why only PROSECUTION and IMPRISONMENT Will Stop Prison Abuse and Police Abuse! Demand It!! How to Avoid the Deaths of More Prison Guards!
Excerpts from the Article:
Anew report into the death of Kenneth Johnson, a 60-year-old Black man, in the Newport prison delivers another scathing review of the actions, or lack of them, by the Vermont Department of Corrections and contracted medical staff.
The 38-page document outlines instances where Johnson, while stating that he couldn’t breathe in the infirmary of the Northern State Correctional Facility, was threatened with being placed in the “hole,” or disciplinary segregation in a holding cell, if he didn’t “knock it off.”
Tristram Coffin, of the Burlington-based law firm of Downs Rachlin Martin and the former U.S. attorney for Vermont, conducted the latest investigation at the request of Mike Smith, Vermont’s health and human services secretary. Johnson died on Dec. 7, 2019.
RELATED STORIES
Report on death of Black inmate who pleaded for help rips corrections, health care provider
“The conclusion is inescapable that more could have and should have been done to care for Mr. Johnson,” Coffin said Monday during a press conference held over video conferencing.
“It just is not sufficient,” Coffin said, “that an inmate complains persistently and credibly of not being able to breathe for a period of some hours, consistently does not see a doctor, does not go to the hospital, and then later on dies.
“That is just not, as a policy matter, how Vermont should be conducting its business.” Coffin said he couldn’t determine conclusively that Johnson’s race played a role in how he was treated.
The report released Monday, though more detailed, provides the same blistering take as prior reports about how the Vermont Department of Corrections and its contracted health care provider, Virginia-based Centurion Managed Care, acted at the time of Johnson’s death.
Other probes
In July, the Vermont Defender General’s Prisoners’ Rights Office released a summary of its investigation into Johnson’s death. It found that Johnson died of an undiagnosed cancerous tumor in his throat, and his pleas that he couldn’t breathe went ignored by corrections and medical staff.
Also, according to the document, Johnson was at times threatened by those expected to care for him. In the hours before his death, the document stated, he told a corrections staffer that he couldn’t breathe and got a response telling him to “knock it off.”
The summary report from the Defender General’s Office also stated, “DOC is complicit in covering up its contractor’s gross failure to provide lifesaving medical care.”
Disability Rights Vermont also looked into Johnson’s death; its report has not yet been made public, but officials with the organization have said their report also had strong words about the care Johnson received in prison, using terms such as “abuse” and “neglect.”
A separate probe into Johnson’s death, conducted by Vermont State Police, has been forwarded to Orleans County State’s Attorney Jennifer Barrett, “though the state police will continue to follow up on any new information as needed to help further the investigation,” Adam Silverman, a state police spokesperson, said in an email Monday.
Barrett, the state’s attorney, said in an email later Monday afternoon, “This case is still under investigation. I have reviewed portions of the case; however, no decision regarding prosecution can be made until the investigation is complete.”
Johnson had been jailed at the Northern State Correctional Center in Newport since September 2017, awaiting trial on sex assault and human trafficking charges. He had pleaded not guilty.
In July, Baker announced that the state would not renew its contract with Centurion Managed Care of Virginia. Instead, the state contracted with Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies.
The report released Monday included information gathered by the investigators from video footage recorded inside the prison, interviews with corrections staff working the night of Johnson’s death, and other records.
Notably, the investigation did not include interviews with Centurion medical staff working in the facility at the time.
“This is a disturbing report,” Smith said of the report. “There’s plenty of blame to go around — from DOC, to the medical provider Centurion, to outside medical providers.”
Smith said he found it “unfortunate” and “disconcerting” that Centurion refused to cooperate with the investigation.
Among the report’s recommendations: The corrections department should implement implicit bias training, clarify policies on the use of holding cells, and improve procedures involving medical observations of inmates. Baker, who took his post after Johnson’s death, said work is underway to put those recommendations into effect, and pledged to continue to “change the culture” in the corrections department.
He said he couldn’t comment at this time whether any disciplinary action has been taken against any corrections staff members in the case, but did say, “There is an ongoing personnel investigation looking at the conduct of staff.”
“He was in significant distress at that point,” Coffin said. Johnson continued to say he couldn’t breathe and wanted to go to the hospital. Instead, Johnson was escorted back to the prison’s infirmary.
“From Supervisor Wright’s gestures and body language, as well as other evidence,” the report stated, “it is likely that Supervisor Wright is telling Mr. Johnson to remain in his bed or he will be placed in a holding cell.” According to a report Wright filed about that second 10-25, “I informed inmate Johnson to knock it off or he would be moved to holding, per the provider, and I returned to normal duties.”
In an interview, Wright told investigators he didn’t know if Johnson’s claims about not being able to breathe were “legitimate” because Johnson talked fine.
Wright added that it was a nurse who first told Johnson he would be placed in a holding cell if he didn’t remain in bed.
Asked if Johnson should have been placed on a “higher, more stringent observation level” after the second 10-25, when Johnson was found on the bathroom floor, Wright replied that he “lacked the authority” to change an inmate observation level for medical reasons.
The third 10-25 took place around 2:15 a.m. on Dec. 7, after another inmate in the infirmary reported he no longer heard the “raspy” sounds Johnson had been making while breathing.
“The nurse checks him; he appears to be unresponsive,” Coffin said, and an ambulance is called. “CPR is initiated, but there’s no further indication that Mr. Johnson is responsive, or has any pulse or respiration at that point in time.” Coffin said Johnson was pronounced dead at North Country Hospital in Newport.
“Despite these interactions with Mr. Johnson, prior to his death, no doctor saw him,” Coffin said. “There was no evaluation in an emergency department despite access to one relatively nearby.”
The Whole Story:
Report on death of Black inmate who pleaded for help rips corrections, health care provider
Vermont is one of two states that allow prisoners the right to vote
This is an issue YOU should speak out about! Voting rights should have NOTHING to do with criminal justice or one’s record. It is blatant suppression of Black votes.
Excerpts from the Article:
While majority of states restrict prisoners from voting, a rare provision in Vermont law gives all state residents voting rights. With just days to go before Election Day, Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos says exercising the right to vote shouldn’t be taken away even for those in state prisons.
“It’s common sense and common courtesy to allow people to be able to participate in their democracy,” says Condos.
Vermont and Maine are the only state that allow inmates to vote, regardless of their sentences or convictions. For the first year, Washington, D.C. is also allowing incarcerated residents to vote too.
Rachel Feldman with the Vermont Department of Corrections says the voting rights of those in prison is granted by the state’s constitution. However, it doesn’t mean all inmates housed in Vermont prisons can vote, only those who are state residents and had a Vermont address before being incarcerated.
“We protect voter privacy the same way voter privacy is protected for those in the general public and we do not track the number of incoming ballots and outgoing ballots,” says Feldman.
Feldman says the Department of Corrections doesn’t keep track of how many people vote from prison. Condos says the state doesn’t keep track either since inmates register to vote using the last Vermont address they had, prior to being incarcerated.
“Studies show that with people who are incarcerated or committed felonies participate in the democratic process are less likely to be rearrested in the future,” says Falko Schilling, the advocacy director of the Vermont ACLU.
Schilling says the ACLU believes all states should allow incarcerated people to vote, especially given people of color are incarcerated at higher rates throughout the country.
“We know that these laws disproportionately impact people of color and strip them of their right to vote. We think this is one more reason people around the country should have the permanent right to vote, and that right should not be taken away when they are incarcerated or convicted of a crime,” says Schilling.
“We are a stronger democracy if every eligible vermonter that can vote does vote,” says Condos.
NOTE THIS AND DO THIS! 🙂 Your comments anywhere on the internet reach a handful of people. Yes, many are clever, witty, and on point about the asshole in our White House, but HERE IS A MUCH BETTER IDEA if you really want to get rid of tRump, or for you to promote ANY cause!
YOU! Do what I do, because I have been doing it for years and it works! Everywhere I go people say: “I read your letters all the time.”
YOU will become famous in your area! Famous for telling the truth, for speaking out on important matters, and THAT is no bullshit!
There are soooo many issues you can write about, you easily could send out a letter each month, THEREBY REACHING MILLIONS OF READERS!
………..
Make A Difference
So many say “why bother, there’s nothing I can do!”
Well, I hope one of those is not you!
For you can be far more influential than you think,
All you need do is share some well-thought-out-ink!
kra 3/11/18
……………………
READ this article and do what it says; with easy to follow instructions. Practical Tip – Get Empowered! How YOU Can Create a Powerful, Effective Force for Reform – http://www.citizensforcriminaljustice.net/practical-tip-how-you-can-create-a-powerful-effective-force-for-reform-of-our-criminal-justice-system/
WRITE A LETTER ABOUT WHATEVER YOU ARE POSTING ABOUT!
$665,000 to stop gun violence, help ex-prisoners in Buncombe; Groups may apply for grants
Our friend, Lynn, sent me this article. If we really want to reduce crime, WE MUST DO MORE OF THESE PROGRAMS!
Excerpts from the Article:
County leaders will use nearly $665,000 in grant money to reduce gun violence and help ex-prisoners reintegrate. The grants were reviewed and approved Nov. 5 by the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners. They were spurred in part by a 2018 Safety and Justice Challenge study paid for by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, county Community Development Specialist Aisha Shepherd told commissioners. The foundation’s goal is to reduce jail numbers, address racial disparities and increase community engagement.
“Both violence and the justice system have desperate impacts on Black people living in Buncombe County,” Shepherd said.
Findings showed that of the first nine homicides of 2020, seven victims were Black men, she said.
“In 2019, Black people represented 6.3% of Buncombe County’s population, yet comprised 25% of the jail population and 69% of gun violence victims.”
Asheville Police block Fayetteville Street in West Asheville as a homicide is investigated on Jan. 13, 2020.
Pandemic jail reduction efforts released 40% of those in the county detention facility, or 158 people. That actually increased the racial disparity, with 33% of the remaining population being Black.
Shepherd said the county is now seeking proposals from community organizations for two $225,000 grants to help with the problems. One $50,000 grant would pay for the development of a comprehensive plan that addresses community safety and reduces gun violence.
A second $175,000 grant would be for a program working with communities most affected by gun violence. That work would include creating “intergenerational spaces that empower safety, trust and healing.”
Republican District 3 Commissioner Joe Belcher of Candler said he supported the efforts and felt some of the “root causes” came down to “lack of jobs and other resources,” particularly for those with criminal records.
Democratic Board Chair Brownie Newman of Asheville said that most places people lived in the county were safe. “But you know we have neighborhoods in our community that are not safe. And I think part of the struggle is you know we don’t want to come at this with the approach of, let’s just throw the most law enforcement resources to this as we can,” Newman said.
Police are part of the solution, he said, but a hard enforcement strategy could also increase the jail population, which goes against one of the goals. “We’ve got to think in other ways about this so I’m really glad we’re doing this process, I’m excited about what ideas might emerge from this.”
In Asheville, police have responded to 522 calls for service regarding a gun discharge or an individual who has been shot, from from Jan. 1 to Nov. 5. During that same time, 38 people have been shot in Asheville.
In a separate action, commissioners voted unanimously to accept a $439,883 grant from the Dogwood Health Trust to reduce recidivism and increase access to medical and mental health and substance use care for prisoners leaving the Buncombe Detention Facility and Swannanoa and Craggy Correctional Centers.
Dogwood was formed during the sale of the nonprofit Mission Hospital to the for-profit company HCA. Dogwood received the profits from the hospital sale and is tasked with distributing them to organizations that help increase the region’s health.
Election 2020 Live Updates: Joseph R. Biden Jr. Has Won the Presidency – With Letter to the Editor- kra
Joe’s victory holds promise for much great criminal justice reform, and it will start with the end of private prisons! You can bet that if I happen to know whomever he appoints as AG, I’ll give him/her a call. 🙂
Just think of it: no more bullshit from lying, foolish, tRump enablers like BARR and POMPEO! 🙂 🙂
The Article:
Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been elected president of the United States, defeating President Trump by promising to restore civility and stability to American politics and vowing more aggressively to combat the surging coronavirus pandemic.
Mr. Biden, 77, on Jan. 20 will become the 46th president and the oldest man ever sworn into the office. On Saturday, four days after Election Day, he secured the requisite 270 votes from the Electoral College.
The election, far closer than many experts had predicted, was history-making: Mr. Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California, is the first woman, and the first woman of color, on a winning presidential ticket.
Mr. Biden’s triumph concluded an extraordinary election that was expected to set modern records for turnout, despite being held amid a pandemic that has upended life across the United States and brought a new level of complexity to the voting process. Voters faced concerns about public health, long lines at the polls, and the vexing challenges of a transformed election system while rendering a verdict on Mr. Trump’s chaotic and norm-breaking presidency. In key battleground states, it took several days to process and count the flood of ballots sent through the mail.
In the end, the race was not the landslide many Democrats had hoped for. And the partisan wrangling is not over: the Trump campaign and Republican lawyers have already begun a wide-ranging legal assault to challenge Democratic votes and victories in swing states.
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I just sent this to my Press list of about 400 media outlets:
Letter to the Editor – 11-7-20 – Amen!
Amen!
The prayers of countless millions of patriotic, level-headed Americans have been answered. The best news in hearing that Biden has won the presidency is that Donald J Trump, lifelong con man, will soon be convicted of serious crimes related to his financial dealings, and people like Barr, Pompeo, and other foolish, lying Trump enablers soon will be replaced by people with integrity.
Amen!
Ken Abraham, Dover, DE 302-423-4067.
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Your comments anywhere on the internet reach a handful of people. Yes, many are clever, witty, and on point about the asshole in our White House, but HERE IS A MUCH BETTER IDEA if you really want to get rid of tRump, or for you to promote ANY cause!
YOU! Do what I do, because I have been doing it for years and it works! Everywhere I go people say: “I read your letters all the time.”
YOU will become famous in your area! Famous for telling the truth, for speaking out on important matters, and THAT is no bullshit!
There are soooo many issues you can write about, you easily could send out a letter each month, THEREBY REACHING MILLIONS OF READERS!
………..
Make A Difference
So many say “why bother, there’s nothing I can do!”
Well, I hope one of those is not you!
For you can be far more influential than you think,
All you need do is share some well-thought-out-ink!
kra 3/11/18
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READ this article and do what it says; with easy to follow instructions. Practical Tip – Get Empowered! How YOU Can Create a Powerful, Effective Force for Reform – http://www.citizensforcriminaljustice.net/practical-tip-how-you-can-create-a-powerful-effective-force-for-reform-of-our-criminal-justice-system/
Offensive Facebook Posts Cost Wisconsin Warden His Job
As it should! There is more than enough racism in the system without adding this idiot.
Excerpts from the Article:
Richard “Sam” Schneiter, a 65-year-old Wisconsin deputy prison warden in charge of 14 minimum-security prisons, was fired in November 2019 after posting offensive memes on his Facebook account.
Schneiter posted two memes on Facebook last July, which were reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. One compared a Muslim woman and child, both in black burkas, to bags of trash. The other equated the flying of the gay pride rainbow flag with the flying of the Confederate flag. After the newspaper story was published, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes tweeted that Schneiter should not have compared Muslims to garbage and that he was the one who had “to be taken out.”
Schneiter, represented by attorney Nate Cade, said the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not establish just cause to fire him. Its investigation into the incident was not thorough, objective or fair, he said, and the postings did not represent his personal views. He claimed he was simply stimulating discussion and debate on the topics. He pointed to his posting of the gay pride flag at the Kenosha Correctional Center in response to Governor Tony Ever’s declaration of June as Pride Month as evidence in support of his claim.
He said Barnes’ comments amounted to a premature conclusion that he be fired and prejudiced his case. “As the second-highest ranking government official in Wisconsin it is not unreasonable to believe that his comments influenced the investigators and decision-makers to a point that his comment became prophecy fulfilled,” he claimed.
Schneiter lost an appeal filed last December to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. He filed a second appeal in January 2020. If he loses, he still has the option of pursuing the case in the state’s court system.
After 36 Years, an Experiment in Private Prisons Comes to an End in Tennessee – Good! – kra
They should come to an end nationwide; they are an abomination. If Biden wins, they might. Obama had begun phasing them out, then tRump came along. Because the wealthy owners of private prisons had donated millions to his campaign, he thought they were a great idea! 🙁
Thirty-six years ago, international attention rested on a county jail that sat alongside a narrow road in the northeast corner of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Journalists from Switzerland and Canada toured the prison. The CBS Show “60 Minutes” featured it in an episode, according to newspaper clippings found at the Chattanooga Public Library.
The Hamilton County Commission voted to hand over operation of the facility to Corrections Corporation of America, known today as CoreCivic, and the company took over the penal farm on Oct. 15, 1984.
Silverdale was a step up. Before it, CoreCivic had only begun managing an immigration detention center in Texas and a juvenile facility in Memphis. This was one of the first times a private company in recent history, riding the idea of privatization, would take over an adult facility. Today, it is one of the largest private prison companies in the nation.
It caught the attention of the world. “Silverdale is the place where everyone will decide if a private company can or should operate a prison,” then-Warden Bob Landon told the Chattanooga Times in 1985.
But this summer, CoreCivic sent a letter to the county saying it was exercising a clause that allowed it to withdraw from the facility within 180 days. The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office is now quickly attempting to take over the aging facility.
And then there was news back in mid-February that two federal judges directed all 52 federal inmates who were housed in the facility to be transferred out and housed in neighboring facilities. They did so, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, for the prisoners’ safety, and the sheriff’s office launched a criminal investigation.
“There was a general understanding, not just among the judges, federal judges, but also the state judges that Silverdale was not being repaired the way it needed to, there was too much laxness in the way that the private company was dealing with the issues,” Hamilton County Sheriff Jim Hammond said in an interview with Courthouse News.
At the request of the judges, Hammond launched an investigation – which included an undercover component – that found many repairs in the facility were left unaddressed. Hammond handed the results over to the county’s Security and Corrections Committee.
For several years, at least one criminal court judge in Hamilton County expressed concern over the access to medical care at Silverdale. While Judge Tom Greenholtz declined a request for an interview, he pointed out several court records where, for instance, he suspended a man’s sentence because when the man developed a “shoulder condition,” the facility gave him Tylenol instead of administering an x-ray; the facility also said the man “refused” treatment for a “cancerous condition,” according to the 2017 order.
In February, federal judges in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee had “suggested strongly” Hammond move federal prisoners from Silverdale but did not issue an order, the sheriff said.
Reports of the conditions at Silverdale, Hammond said, “reinforced a lot of people’s thinking that you need to get rid of a privatization and take it back under government.”
“Because it may be a little more costly in the front end, but with government you’re assured these people’s rights are being protected, which are just the basic rights like proper ventilation, proper lights coming in, proper food schedule,” he said. “The things that are just human rights.”
CoreCivic sent its letter announcing it was pulling out of Silverdale on July 3.
Prison Legal News, a publication Wright helped start in 1990, has reported on and sued CoreCivic over the years, including a suit seeking to have some of the company’s records subject to Tennessee’s open record laws.
The industry faces a threat during an administration change. As the Obama administration wound to a close, it announced it planned to do away with federal private prison contracts. But when Trump won the 2016 election, CoreCivic’s stocks jumped. It prompted a securities lawsuit, which is scheduled to go to trial in Nashville in 2021.
Furthermore, Wright said, the highest profit margin for companies like CoreCivic is in immigration centers: about $160 a day for a person housed in immigration detention while some of the company’s state contracts house prisoners for a third of that amount, according to Wright.
“Basically, it’s those immigration contracts that keep the private prison industry afloat,” Wright said. “Like, if they lost those federal immigration contracts tomorrow, I don’t know that we would have a private prison industry of Geo and CoreCivic by the end of the month.”
Recently, Wright said, CoreCivic seemed to have transitioned some of its business into government leasing, buying office space in Maryland to rent out to the federal government agencies like the Social Security Administration. CoreCivic is also working with Alabama to build two facilities, which it would then lease to the state. Meanwhile another private prison firm, Geo Group, has purchased an electronic monitoring company.
Wright, who spent 17 years incarcerated for murder in Washington state, said private prison firms have not been expanding the number of clients they have, despite the industry existing for three decades, with the biggest client being the federal government.
“None of the promises of big savings to taxpayers — none of that’s materialized,” Wright said. “They haven’t shown they can do anything better than the government. They turn a profit for their shareholders but a lot of that has to do I think with the scams of government procurement and contracting.”
In May, the company released an environmental, social and governance report in which CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger said when the company started, the courts had declared eight corrections systems unconstitutionally dangerous because of their conditions and had intervened in 40 states because of the states of the jails.
Hammond estimates that about 40% of the prisoners currently housed at Silverdale don’t need to be there but are there because of underlying social issues. With the county spending about $100,000 a day on housing prisoners, a reduction in inmates could mean big savings for the county, Hammond said.
To accomplish that, he hopes to lean into “criminal justice reform social programs,” pushing inmates to get their GEDs and providing them with psychological and medical help.
In February, the Department of Justice granted the county $2.2 million to provide “intensive treatment,” services and housing subsidies for people who are homeless, have mental health issues and frequently need the attention of the area’s hospitals and law enforcement resources. The FUSE program, according to the county, is used by only 30 agencies in the nation, and the sheriff’s office has identified about 100 people to help under the program.
“I think we’re entering an age when the public in general expects more social programs involved in reentry for people who are in and out of jail, such as beefing up programs to help them get better education, so they won’t recidivate, programs that will help them get jobs, so they won’t recidivate, counseling programs to help them with their marriages and their personal life,” Hammond said.
Prisons are a public health crisis, the American Public Health Association says – Yes it Is! – kra
Some of us have known this for many years. YOU should be concerned because it is your Moms, Dads, sons, daughters, neighbors, friends, … who are dying due to the lack of health care in our prisons.
Excerpts from the Article:
Typically, calls for decarceration — investing in schools and public housing instead of prisons or practicing restorative justice — from activists and grassroots organizations are seen by policy makers as lofty aspirations rather than realistic goals. But the activist perspective on criminal justice got a boost over the weekend from the American Public Health Association, which released a set of overarching policy proposals arguing that prisons and public health are mutually exclusive. Addressing the current coronavirus crisis holistically, the APHA argued, will require the abolition of incarceration in the United States.
The APHA is comprised of 25,000 members, publishes a well-respected public health journal, and regularly comments on policy. In its announcement calling for the abolition of carceral systems, the APHA has become one of the first and largest non-criminal justice organizations to wade into the conversation of whether the American prison system can be reformed or, indeed, abolished entirely. The U.S. incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world, spending trillions of federal, state, and local tax dollars on jails, immigration detention centers, pre-trial detention, and prison upkeep. Specifically, the recommendations concern the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been especially deadly in jails and prisons. America must “immediately and urgently reduce the number of people incarcerated in jails, prisons, and detention centers, regardless of conviction, especially in light of pressing concerns related to COVID-19 transmission,” the APHA said.
As Mic reported in June, when individual states were struggling to get their coronavirus responses off the ground, those incarcerated in Los Angeles County were particularly vulnerable to the spread of the virus. As officials were slow to adopt widespread testing, case numbers spiked. The rise in case numbers wasn’t just a result of access to testing, but rather a reflection of the jail and prison system itself. Lenore Anderson, the founder and president of Californians for Safety and Justice, told Mic at the time that incarceration increases the likelihood that people will get sick and is counterproductive to maintaining public health. “Independent of COVID, we’re talking about a criminal justice system that actually spread poor health by design,” she said.
The APHA’s statement appears largely informed by calls from BIPOC-led social change organizations. Over the summer, amid the racial justice uprisings, the Movement for Black Lives penned the BREATHE Act, a call for a vast upending of the criminal justice system. Many of the policies outlined in the BREATHE Act addressed America’s reliance on prisons and jails, as incarceration is both the legacy of enslavement as well as a huge drain on public funds. The APHA echoed some of the proposal’s demands, calling for the “abolition of carceral systems and building in their stead just and equitable structures that advance the public’s health.”
The APHA offers recommendations about how to achieve structures that advance public health, ranging from investing in housing and employment to restoring voting rights for current and formerly incarcerated people. Critically, the APHA announcement acknowledges the systemic and racist nature of the criminal-legal system, in that some people are more likely to interact with police, courts, and jails than others. The guidelines advocate for studying the social structures that predetermine one’s likelihood of interacting with these systems, and re-allocating “funding from the construction of new jails and prisons to the societal determinants of health, including affordable, quality, and accessible housing, health care, employment, education, and transportation.”
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