Archive for July 27, 2008
Hold your breath: prison de-segregation to begin
Jul 27th
racial integration in prison cells
Three long years after SCOTUS held in Johnson v. California that prison segregation policies were subject to “strict scrutiny” and remanded to the Federal district court for further consideration, California’s prisons are about to enter a new era of racial desegregation.
It was an unwritten policy in California prisons that members of the same race would be cellies, so as to minimize the opportunity for violence amongst prison gangs, which are usually formed around race.
As a result of a settlement between the plaintiffs and California, however, inmates will no longer be permitted to be paired based on the color of their skin. Not all are excited about this move, however:
Many inmates fiercely oppose integrating cells, calling it a dangerous idea that is guaranteed to lead to widespread riots and death.
“It’s like screwing around with the ecosystem,” said Rodney Raxon, 35, a white inmate at Lancaster’s high-security prison. “We don’t want any part of it.”
Several inmates said racial separation helps preserve the peace. In dining halls and prison yards where convicts can commingle if they choose, they hang out with their own. Chosen representatives handle communication between groups, they said, to avoid riots.
As the gym’s black representative, Lavel Atkins, 34, of Compton, Calif., said he defuses nearly 20 grievances a day over issues such as whether one inmate’s splashing water on another was a sign of disrespect. There would be more disputes, he said, if members of various races were forced to room together.
The lawsuit was initiated by inmate Johnson who argued that segregation heightened the pressure on him (and probably other inmates) to align themselves with a gang.
This new program doesn’t mean there will be complete desegregation, however. Now inmates will be evaluated by a host of other categories to determine who would be an appropriate cellmate:
Under the program, prisoners were interviewed and assigned one of five housing codes based on factors such as criminal history, custody level and the inmate’s preference, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the corrections department. The classifications determine whether prison officials can place an inmate in a cell with members of all other races, with one race but not others, or with only his own race.
So now race gang affiliation will be one consideration in determining who to pair together, not the only consideration.
I’m not sure if such a program has been undertaken in another state in the country; a state that has similar demographics and gang violence problems like California. The CA program is modeled closely on a similar program utilized by Texas back in the ’70s. But things have changed since then:
With more than 171,000 inmates, California houses nearly four times the population that Texas did when it began the process. And unlike Texas, which integrated with a prison population below capacity, California’s is 195 percent above capacity.
That overflow gives California officials less flexibility, said Thomas Beauclair, deputy director of the National Institute of Corrections. “They’ve got inmates in gymnasiums sleeping on the floor in some of their institutions,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy for them.”
California also faces a larger, more fractious and more entrenched gang problem, according to experts and prisoners. Northern Hispanics, for instance, are warring with Southern Hispanics.
So the success or failure of this program will be watched closely by other states in the country. After all, the major concern in prisons should be the safety of all people who are within those walls – that includes staff and inmates.
Of course, the violence in prisons is also a by-product of severe overcrowding and a breakdown of the rehabilitation function of our correctional institutions. Whether a degeneration of the social and moral fiber of the nation is also a contributing factor is too complex a question to contemplate or answer here.
But if this is a tool in maintaining safety and security in prisons, I am all for it.
I’m not judging
Jul 27th
Here are some recent searches that brought readers to this blog. No chuckling. Act your age.
- “I am on probation and lied to the prosecutor.”
- “Cop first day back catching criminal 2008″ (??)
- “Is internet porn illegal in ct?”
- “Been a public defender too long”
- “Ice cream truck” and “back of ice cream truck” (I hesitate to venture a guess)
- “Worn prison clothes” (It’s the summer fashion)
- “Is it ethical for a public defender to refuse to represent a person believed to be guilty?” (No.)
and the piece de resistance:
- “Connecticut prisons sex”
Yeah.
To top it off, the image above was found on… wait for it… Sen. Larry Craig’s Senate webpage.
Bug me not
Jul 27th
Thought I’d pass this along. I’ve been using this handy tool for years now. Bug Me Not is website that lets you bypass “free, compulsory” registration that you encounter on many websites, which require you to enter personal information. There’s a Firefox extension, too. You’ll thank me later.
Sunday stupidity: Love your cop edition
Jul 27th
Scott encourages us to post a good story today about an encounter with a cop. Since I have nothing interesting to add, I will turn it over to my good friend Peter Griffin (Warning: to the one of you who hasn’t quite figured out that Family Guy can be rather offensive, you are warned. Again.):
Right of allocution subject to cross-examination
Jul 27th
The Supreme Court of California, on Thursday, issued a rather curious opinion, holding that a defendant has no right of allocution unless it is subject to cross-examination by the prosecution. Granted, this was a case of statutory interpretation and thus, has no bearing on any other State, it is still indicative of some trends in the criminal justice system nationwide.
The right of allocution, which has its roots in common law, is the right of a defendant to make a statement to the court on his own behalf and present information in mitigation of sentence. It started out as the ancient common-law practice of inquiring of every defendant if he had anything to say before sentence was imposed.
Back in the day, when death was the only punishment and defendants had no counsel, it was used to beg for mercy. In modern times, the right had evolved to permit a defendant to plead for a more lenient sentence and to fit with our modern sense of justice and the (now antiquated) desire to rehabilitate. At one point in the not-so-distant past, we treated defendants as individuals and allocution was an opportunity – a final opportunity – for the defendant to explain to the judge, in his or her own words, why he should get a certain punishment and not any other.
A defendant will stand before the court, allocuting (and thus elocuting), only if he is a convict. Which is why it is curious that the California Supreme Court chose to construe its statute in the way it did. Not because it is not a reasonable interpretation of the Statute, but because, in my opinion, there was really no need to do so.
Most judges are smart enough to know when the defendant is being sincere and when not and I’ve often seen judges here in CT expressly disagree with some of the “mitigating” statements made by defendants during allocution. Sometimes, only sometimes, do these statements have any impact on the sentence to be imposed.
More than anything, it is an avenue for the defendant, who is about to have his freedom and liberty taken away for (often) a long period of time, to feel like he had an opportunity to say something to the Court. More often than not, what the defendant says in court is heavily controlled by counsel and happens only under the narrowest of circumstances.
But it would behoove us to remember that these are not cattle or numbers. These are people, who have done bad things and who will have to pay for them. Before we send them away for significant stretches of time (and forget about them), we should grant them this much: the opportunity to speak unfettered by the constraints of evidentiary rules. It will almost certainly have no impact on the verdict or the sentence to be imposed.
By requiring such statements to be made under oath and subject to cross-examination, the California Supreme Court has offered the criminal justice system another opportunity to dump on defendants and to rub their nose in the fact that they are now criminals and nothing they say can or should be trusted.
Maybe it is a fundamental difference in the way we view defendants. I don’t view them as bad people, but rather as people who have made bad decisions. As such, every person should have the opportunity to say something to appease his or her mind.
In Connecticut, the right of allocution is provided for by Practice Book Section 43-10. Justice Berdon explained1 why the right is so important:
Modern day justifications for preserving the practice focus on tailoring punishment to individual circumstances, providing an avenue through which a defendant may ask for mercy based on factors that might not otherwise be brought to the court’s attention, and promoting safety, certainty and equity in sentencing and the judicial process overall. The opportunity to plead for mercy is another provision in a procedural body of law designed to enable our system of justice to mete out punishment in the most equitable fashion possible, to help ensure that sentencing is particularized and reflects individual circumstances. . .
Aside from its practical role in sentencing, the right has value in terms of maximizing the perceived equity of the process. The right of allocution affords a criminal defendant the opportunity to make a final plea to the judge on his own behalf prior to sentencing. . . . Ancient in law, allocution is both a rite and a right. It is designed to temper punishment with mercy in appropriate cases. Allocution provides a defendant the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the sentencing process and to show that he or she is a complex individual and not merely an object to be acted upon.
(Internal citations and quotations ommitted.) Interestingly, the CT Supreme Court has held that there is no right to allocution during the penalty phase of a capital trial2.
This CA decision leads me to wonder if the CA court would require victim statements to be made under oath and subject to cross-examination. The modern trend has been to allow greater participation of victims in the criminal justice system (something that I have not always agreed with) and to make it easier for the defendant to be labeled a criminal and herded along with the rest of his brethren. But one of the complaints I hear from clients is that the victim spoke during sentencing and made several, unsubstantiated, untrue statements.
I doubt the CA court would require any such thing. Victims have powerful lobbies now. The defendants have only us.
1. State v. Strickland, 243 Conn. 339 (1997)
2. State v. Colon, 272 Conn. 106 (2004)
H/T: Bashman
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