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PAN Discussion Group Wednesday March 26th 2008
Subject: US Prison System
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Location: near Athenaeum Theater
Thanks to everyone for the good articles again this month
General:
The articles are the basis for the discussion and reading them helps give us some common ground and focus for the discussion, especially where we would otherwise be ignorant of the issues. The discussions are not intended as debates or arguments, rather they should be a chance to explore ideas and issues in a constructive forum. Feel free to bring along other stuff you've read on this, related subjects or on topics the group might be interested in for future meetings.
GROUND RULES:
* Temper the urge to speak with the discipline to listen and leave space for others
* Balance the desire to teach with a passion to learn
* Hear what is said and listen for what is meant
* Marry your certainties with others' possibilities
* Reserve judgment until you can claim the understanding we seek
Any problems let me know...
Colin
tysoe2@yahoo.com
The Articles:
PDF version of "In Need of Correction"
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First a recent NY Times article on prison statistics
February 28, 2008
1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says
By ADAM LIPTAK
For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.
Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.
Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.
The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that only one in 355 white women between the ages of 35 and 39 are behind bars but that one in 100 black women are.
The report’s methodology differed from that used by the Justice Department, which calculates the incarceration rate by using the total population rather than the adult population as the denominator. Using the department’s methodology, about one in 130 Americans is behind bars.
Either way, said Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director, “we aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration.”
But Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge, said the Pew report considered only half of the cost-benefit equation and overlooked the “very tangible benefits — lower crime rates.”
In the past 20 years, according the Federal Bureau of Investigation, violent crime rates fell by 25 percent, to 464 for every 100,000 people in 2007 from 612.5 in 1987.
“While we certainly want to be smart about who we put into prisons,” Professor Cassell said, “it would be a mistake to think that we can release any significant number of prisoners without increasing crime rates. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense.”
Ms. Urahn said the nation cannot afford the incarceration rate documented in the report. “We tend to be a country in which incarceration is an easy response to crime,” she said. “Being tough on crime is an easy position to take, particularly if you have the money. And we did have the money in the ‘80s and ‘90s.”
Now, with fewer resources available, the report said, “prison costs are blowing a hole in state budgets.” On average, states spend almost 7 percent on their budgets on corrections, trailing only healthcare, education and transportation.
In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once adjusted for inflation. With money from bonds and the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.
It cost an average of $23,876 dollars to imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which data were available. But state spending varies widely, from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana.
The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, and will accelerate as the prison population ages.
About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006.
The number of prisoners in California dropped by 4,000 last year, making Texas’s prison system the nation’s largest, at about 172,000. But the Texas legislature last year approved broad changes to the corrections system there, including expansions of drug treatment programs and drug courts and revisions to parole practices.
“Our violent offenders, we lock them up for a very long time — rapists, murderers, child molestors,” said John Whitmire, a Democratic state senator from Houston and the chairman of the state senate’s criminal justice committee. “The problem was that we weren’t smart about nonviolent offenders. The legislature finally caught up with the public.”
He gave an example.
“We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” he said, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. “They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”
The Pew report recommended diverting nonviolent offenders away from prison and using punishments short of reincarceration for minor or technical violations of probation or parole. It also urged states to consider earlier release of some prisoners.
Before the recent changes in Texas, Mr. Whitmire said, “we were recycling nonviolent offenders.”
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Next a commentary on the report from Feministe blog
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/03/09/america-behind-bars/
1 in 100 American adults are in prison. And people of color have it even worse:
Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 adult Hispanic men is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 adult black men is, too, as is one in nine black men ages 20 to 34.
The report, from the Pew Center on the States, also found that one in 355 white women ages 35 to 39 is behind bars, compared with one in 100 black women.
And the excuses are astounding:
But Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah and a former federal judge, said the Pew report considered only half of the cost-benefit equation and overlooked the “very tangible benefits: lower crime rates.”
In the past 20 years, according the Federal Bureau of Investigation, rates of violent crimes fell by 25 percent, to 464 per 100,000 people in 2007 from 612.5 in 1987.
“While we certainly want to be smart about who we put into prisons,” Professor Cassell said, “it would be a mistake to think that we can release any significant number of prisoners without increasing crime rates. One out of every 100 adults is behind bars because one out of every 100 adults has committed a serious criminal offense.”
This guy is a law professor?
First, an incarceration rate of 1 in 100 does not mean that 1 in 100 adults has committed a serious crime. And considering how many people go to jail for non-violent drug offenses, I question how we’re defining the word “serious.” Further, throwing people in jail is not necessarily the best way to lower the crime rate. Sure, it works to a point — so does a total police state. But there has to be a balance, and I think it’s pretty clear that we’ve tipped it.
The United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world. China is second, with 1.5 million people behind bars. The gap is even wider in percentage terms.
Germany imprisons 93 out of every 100,000 people, according to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London. The comparable number for the United States is roughly eight times that, or 750 out of 100,000.
I don’t have German crime rates on hand, but based solely on my experience living there for a few months, I feel relatively confident guessing that their crime rates are lower than ours. Shockingly, factors other than the threat of incarceration (or the reality of mass incarceration) deter people from committing crimes.
It’s also expensive to incarcerate people at such an enormous rate:
On average, states spend almost 7 percent of their budgets on corrections, trailing only health care, education and transportation.
In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections. That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 percent increase when adjusted for inflation. With money from bonds and the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the Pew report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.
It cost an average of $23,876 dollars to imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which data were available. But state spending varies widely, from $45,000 a year in Rhode Island to $13,000 in Louisiana.
“Getting tough on crime has gotten tough on taxpayers,” said Adam Gelb, the director of the public safety performance project at the Pew center. “They don’t want to spend $23,000 on a prison cell for a minor violation any more than they want a bridge to nowhere.”
The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, and will accelerate as the prison population ages.
About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006.
So why do it? If tax payers are unhappy, if imprisonment doesn’t deter crime all that effectively, and if this is costing a ridiculous amount of money that could be better spent elsewhere, why are we expanding this system?
Because the system is highly profitable and extremely beneficial for powerful people.
Three decades after the war on crime began, the United States has developed a prison-industrial complex—a set of bureaucratic, political, and economic interests that encourage increased spending on imprisonment, regardless of the actual need. The prison-industrial complex is not a conspiracy, guiding the nation’s criminal-justice policy behind closed doors. It is a confluence of special interests that has given prison construction in the United States a seemingly unstoppable momentum. It is composed of politicians, both liberal and conservative, who have used the fear of crime to gain votes; impoverished rural areas where prisons have become a cornerstone of economic development; private companies that regard the roughly $35 billion spent each year on corrections not as a burden on American taxpayers but as a lucrative market; and government officials whose fiefdoms have expanded along with the inmate population. Since 1991 the rate of violent crime in the United States has fallen by about 20 percent, while the number of people in prison or jail has risen by 50 percent. The prison boom has its own inexorable logic. Steven R. Donziger, a young attorney who headed the National Criminal Justice Commission in 1996, explains the thinking: “If crime is going up, then we need to build more prisons; and if crime is going down, it’s because we built more prisons—and building even more prisons will therefore drive crime down even lower.”
The raw material of the prison-industrial complex is its inmates: the poor, the homeless, and the mentally ill; drug dealers, drug addicts, alcoholics, and a wide assortment of violent sociopaths. About 70 percent of the prison inmates in the United States are illiterate. Perhaps 200,000 of the country’s inmates suffer from a serious mental illness. A generation ago such people were handled primarily by the mental-health, not the criminal-justice, system. Sixty to 80 percent of the American inmate population has a history of substance abuse. Meanwhile, the number of drug-treatment slots in American prisons has declined by more than half since 1993. Drug treatment is now available to just one in ten of the inmates who need it. Among those arrested for violent crimes, the proportion who are African-American men has changed little over the past twenty years. Among those arrested for drug crimes, the proportion who are African-American men has tripled. Although the prevalence of illegal drug use among white men is approximately the same as that among black men, black men are five times as likely to be arrested for a drug offense. As a result, about half the inmates in the United States are African-American. One out of every fourteen black men is now in prison or jail. One out of every four black men is likely to be imprisoned at some point during his lifetime. The number of women sentenced to a year or more of prison has grown twelvefold since 1970. Of the 80,000 women now imprisoned, about 70 percent are nonviolent offenders. About 75 percent have children.
And that article is from 10 years ago — the numbers have only gotten worse.
Prisons are a great way for big corporations to make money — and it’s your tax dollars that are paying them. The increasing privatization of the prison system further enables companies to feed off of the prison “market,” with little public oversight. Someone has to build the new prisons that are going up every year, provide prison food, make prison clothing, and create an ever-growing list of incarceration “tools” to better control inmates — and our government is happy to pay private corporations to do it, even if those corporations routinely cut corners to the detriment of prisoners, prison employees and American taxpayers. Billions of tax dollars every year go to prison corporations, churches, investment banks, defense industry giants and other groups that exploit the prison population for economic gain. All of those groups have good reason to want to maintain our insanely high incarceration rates.
Corporations are also funding politicians to the tune of millions — $33 million in 44 states in the 2002 and 2004 election cycles. In other words, there are a lot of extremely wealthy and influential people who have a vested economic interest in maintaining a bloated, racist prison system.
And entire communities depend on prisons for their economic stability. They have disproportionate political power — prison inmates count as residents, meaning that the areas are allocated greater resources that the inmates don’t benefit from and they’re counted in the population of Congressional districts. And inmates, of course, can’t vote — and in many states, they can’t vote once they get out, either.
I have some sympathy for rural Americans who see that prison reform threatens their employment and their economic well-being — there are a great many rural pockets that are economically sustained entirely by the prisons in their communities. But that simply isn’t a good argument for our astonishing incarceration rates. Prison labor drives down wages for non-incarcerated Americans, which disproportionately affects low-wage workers. And the money we spend on corporate prison welfare could be better directed towards stimulating economic growth in rural areas.
We’re all getting screwed by the prison industrial complex — or at least, all of us except for those who work for the big corporations and lobbying groups, whose pockets are lined with prison dollars. But some of us — prisoners, for example, and people of color — are getting screwed a whole lot worse than others. Prison reform is one of the most crucial social justice issues in the United States, and yet even in an election year, candidates from all parties are silent about it.
When 1 in 100 adult Americans are behind bars, this should be a major issue. But because it impacts the least powerful people in society, everyone avoids it — including the progressive candidates.
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Next a review of a book I would have loved to have included more specifics from.
The U.S. Prison State - Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor - Book Review by Marilyn Buck
Tara Herivel and Paul Wright, editors, Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor (New York: Routledge, 2003)
I sit in the day room/lobby waiting to be released for lunch. I read a novel in which one character, a Pole, comments to another that the Germans consider Poles to be untermenschen, subhuman. I look at the women around me: Latinas arguing among themselves in Spanish; a black woman making signals to someone I don't see; two white women--one of whom is stringing beads--are murmuring together. Two of these women are here because they are undocumented workers; three are incarcerated for economic offenses; the other is falsely convicted; all of us are caught inside the nightmare of an oppressive state and an expanding empire. Instead of storm trooper boots and brown shirts, those who command wear Tony Lamas cowboy boots, expensive suits, and ties--men who see in the U.S. prison establishment ways to both intensify control of the population and squeeze more profits out of late-stage capitalism.
Prison has always been the final gate in the repressive apparatus of a state. It serves the purpose of social and political control, although it manifests itself differently in different nation-states and in different political periods. Nevertheless, the prisoner is, with few exceptions, always a scapegoat and considered a deviant. Prison is not only a class weapon; it is also an instrument to control "alien" populations. In the United States, these "alien" populations are formerly colonized peoples--former slaves, Native Americans, Latin Americans, Asians, and Pacific Islanders--and they have all too often been considered the internal enemy. They are the people most needing control and are therefore the majority of those locked down in U.S. prisons.
The United States is the world's primary example of a country that deals with its social, economic, and cultural problems by incarceration. But this is its history. Prisons are the logical outcome of the country's foundation on the genocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans, and the "manifest destiny" of imperial settlerism--from sea to shining sea.
Prison Nation is a recently-released anthology of essays on both the state of U.S. prison and the U.S. prison state. Most of the essays were written in the new century. One more century of American prisoners. The writers are prisoners, journalists, academics, and activists. Unfortunately, none of the writers are women prisoners or ex-prisoners.
Readers are probably familiar with abominable prison conditions--rape, torture, restraint chairs, gladiator fights--from newspaper and magazine accounts. Prison and human rights activists might even have read some of the book's essays. But what marks this collection as a whole is the first-rate discussion of these brutal circumstances and how these are the logical and normative result of incarceration itself.
The essays in sections 5, "Malign Neglect: Prison Medicine," and 6, "Rape, Racism, and Repression," give ample evidence of the inhumanity and cruelty of the system: Death sentences result from nonexistent or malpracticed medical care. The mentally ill are warehoused and even healthy prisoners tend to fall prey to mental illness because of the insane and brutal conditions of prison's bedlam (see "The New Bedlam" by Willie Wisely). Prisoner rape--both rape by guards mainly of female prisoners, and by predatory male prisoners of other male prisoners--is frequently given free reign by guards.
There are other essays which detail the more subtle elements of dehumanization, ones that those who have not experienced prison either as a prisoner or as a family member or friend of a prisoner might not ever consider--such as a prisoner being warehoused far from home and family. Nell Bernstein discusses the far-reaching repercussions of long distance visiting and the need of children for their parents in two essays: "Swept Away," and "Relocation Blues."
The psychological trauma and cruelty generated inside the prison system filters through into everything outside of it, deforming and undermining the whole of civil society. Prison society begins to serve as a model for other organizations. In his essay "Capital Crimes," George Winslow concludes, "Corporate power currently allows companies to create serious social problems by legal and illegal means."
The U.S. prison state has spread its tentacles into communities and classes, which are manipulated both by the law and the lure of economic development. In "An American Seduction," Joelle Fraser draws a portrait of a prison town in need of more inhabitants and more work. Susanville, California expected economic well-being; what it got was a supermax prison, greater pressure on its social infrastructure, and a culture of violence unexpected even among its many ranchers, hunters, and fishers. Even the night has been affected. The author's brother describes returning home to a brightly lit prison, which has destroyed the darkness of the countryside night. "It looked futuristic, unnatural, something out of a science fiction movie. Like some giant alien mother ship had landed."
The central theme of Prison Nation is the economic dynamic and roles of prisons in U.S. capitalism, that is, the prison-industrial complex. This anthology does an excellent job of analyzing and describing how the prison-industrial complex works as an integral part of U.S. capitalism by generating large profits for corporations. Essays and case studies detail how the incorporation of prisons into the system of capital accumulation was accomplished, both through changes in the criminal code and business law and the manipulation of public perceptions and fears. In "The Politics of Prison Labor," Gordon Lafer explains the interplay of political expediency, taxes, and budgets: "When the economy goes into a recession, the supply of decently paid jobs will shrink ... some number of [the laid-off and fired] will engage in nonviolent crimes ... [and end up incarcerated] .... It is important to note that this cycle is not the result of a conscious conspiracy among public officials ... it is, rather, the natural result of each party pursuing its own rational interests under current conditions."
While the articles that explain how capital and the law work to create this expanding prison nation, there are few strategies suggested to organize to stop the abuses, to hold the socially-sanctioned criminals accountable, and to challenge more fundamentally the prison-industrial complex. A notable exception is detailed in "Campus Activism Defeats Multinational's Profiteering" by Kevin Pranis. This is a report on campus activism in opposition to a foreign multinational that supplies both universities and prisons--Sodexho Alliance, which " ... in 1994, entered into strategic alliance with the world's largest prison company, Corrections Corporation of America [CCA]." The students forced Sodexho to get rid of its large stock interest in CCA. This essay is also valuable in showing the breadth of industrial capital's involvement in prisons for profit. From razor blades to razor wire, some corporation is profiting from both public and private prisons.
In the essays on rape, the organization Stop Prisoner Rape is mentioned as a source of information on prisoner rape, but there is no article about its history and struggles inside the prisons, which have led to some victories. Its strategic view and social practice would have been valuable to prison activists.
The inclusion of more activist essays would have taken this anthology forward to stimulate further creativity and strategy in a movement to confront corporate/military/state power. It is not enough to shake our heads at a capitalism which has now shed all but a few shreds of its democratic facade. This struggle continues to be critically important as the United States expands its police state and concentration camp empire from Pelican Bay and Florence to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to the detention camps at Guantanamo--the military supermax concentration camp.
Mark Dow's essay, "Secrecy, Power, Indefinite Detention," on the detention and treatment of immigrants, illuminates the role of incarceration as part of foreign and domestic social control policies. In 2002, 115,000 immigrants were deported. Currently, 21,000 immigrants are being detained. Convicted legal residents, even if they have no homeland, are being deported to other countries, or they remain in longterm detention, with little hope of release.
Security and intimidation are the sidearms of an immigration policy that leads to exploitation of both workers and undocumented workers. This is a two-pronged attack: one on the immigrant, both those who are legal and those who are undocumented, and another on the U.S.-born black, Native American, Latino, and Asian and Pacific Islander populations. Both of these attacks are based primarily on skin color.
Noam Chomsky, in "Drug Policy as Social Control," observes that in the typical third world society, where there is a great disparity between the wealthy few and the impoverished many, the solution is "to get rid of the superfluous people, and ... to control those who are suffering." He posits that the drug war is the "U.S. counterpart to 'social cleansing'" because a so-called democracy has to rely more on techniques of social control than straightforward murder and genocide. This noted, what this anthology lacks is sufficient analysis of the historic role of prisons as an integral part of imperialism and white supremacy.
Several articles discuss racism. The disproportionate number of black men in prison is noted, but overall national and colonial status is diffused into "the poor." There is little analysis of why there is such a racial disproportionality. Mumia Abu Jamal, the noted journalist and political prisoner long held on death row, states in one of his two essays, "Anatomy of a Whitewash," "if the status quo is an oppressive one, with white supremacy as the guiding principle, to preserve such a regime is wrong indeed." He also discusses the role of white supremacy. And, in an excellent article, "Color Bind: Prisons and the New American Racism," Paul Street explores the role of incarceration in the suppression and destruction of the black community. He notes that prison becomes, according to Bureau of Justice Statistics Director Jan Chaiken, "almost a normative life experience" in black urban communities. He delineates some of the ways in which the imprisonment of an increasingly large part of black communities is destroying the ability of those communities to develop. The black community is used to generating economic activity that does not benefit but rather injures the community through loss of potential earnings and savings. Even more important is the loss of human and social capital and therefore social development.
Finally, Street points out that "mass incarceration is hardly an inevitable product of capitalism." In Europe mass incarceration is not part of the capitalist system. In the United States, however, it is an integral part of capitalist and imperialist development. The Trail of Tears and the Middle Passage are journeys to the first of the concentration camps--Indian reservations and plantations--and the beginnings of the U.S. strategy to work the captured and colonized to death.
The absence of analysis about this role of the prison nation is conspicuous, precisely because of the detailed description and analysis of the prison nation as a class issue. However, to talk about class without understanding that white supremacy is one of the ideological bases of imperialism and therefore informs all of its strategies, domestic and international, leaves one less clear about the historical role of the descendants of slaves, Native Americans, colonized Mexicans, and imported Asians as the backbone of the "American" working class. This leads to repeating the past. It would be wise to heed W.E.B. Du Bois when he pointed out in Black Reconstruction that the lack of support for black slave workers by the white working class set back the international class struggle a hundred years--or more, as we now witness.
Ultimately, there is no "humane" way to detain, incarcerate, or isolate the criminalized elements of a society. It is likely that even in a more ideal society, prisons will still tend toward dehumanization and degradation. That is the nature of institutions where human beings are held involuntarily, whether it be a boarding or military school, a mental hospital, or a prison.
George Winslow concludes that "[u]ntil there is a political movement to address these problems by creating a more just society, there is little hope of achieving justice in our prisons and courts." I would add that any struggle to change the society must include changing the nature and purpose, if not dismantling, the repressive apparatus and the prison system that helps to define it. Mumia Abu Jamal cites Thoreau in his attack on slavery, Civil Disobedience, "the law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free"; and, says Mumia, " ... the law protects white class interests above all else."
The women I see in the day room fall asleep each night dreaming of more effective or semi-miraculous paths to their freedom--a way home to their children and families. Each of us, as well as our families, friends, and communities, are caught up in both a personal and social tragedy--we all pay a price for the absence of prisoners from the world. If all who know and love even one prisoner, or who simply detest the dehumanization, degradation, and racism of the U.S. prison apparatus, were to join in some facet of the struggle to bring this insane system under control and, perhaps, to change it, even abolish it, change could occur. Millions of people across the United States are connected to prisoners and former prisoners. They have the power to act in the struggle to overturn the prison nation.
In every generation, diverse voices ... insistently proclaim that the very notion of class struggle is obsolete, part of a world that has irrevocably vanished, and that the manifestations of it which still occur are the work of ill-intentioned people wholly out of tune with the times. What they mean, of course, is that class struggle from below is obsolete. What they ignore is that even if it were true that class struggle from below was disappearing, class struggle from above would endure, and would indeed be given greater strength and scope, precisely because of reduced pressure from below.
--Ralph Miliband, Divided Societies, p. 207
Marilyn Buck is a political prisoner serving an eighty-year sentence.
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Some more specifics on health in prisons… (Converted from PDF hence weird format in places. I’ll add the original PDF to the PAN website)
PDF version of "In Need of Correction"
A FORUM HELD ON SEPTEMBER 28, 2005 TO HIGHLIGHT RESEARCH FROM THE OCTOBER 2005 AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
SPONSORED BY THE AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION IN COLLABORATION WITH THE COMMUNITY VOICES INITIATIVE OF THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR PRIMARY CARE AT THE MOREHOUSE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE IN NEED OF CORRECTION: THE PRISON CYCLE OF HEALTH CARE HEALTHCARE FOR THE UNDERSERVED
Community Voices: HealthCare for the Underserved has chosen to highlight the issues surrounding individuals in re-entry from jails and prisons as a part of our overall work to improve the health of underserved communities. We believe this work is essential because ignoring the fate of poor men and women who
have lost their legal voice and place in our communities will make things worse on all utilizing our nation_s health care system. As the debt accrues for delivering care to those without a pay-ment system so does the levels of incarceration. The foundation of Community Voices is rooted in listening to the voices of those in communities nationwide and responding with action and policy op-tions. Our work, within the National Center for Primary Care at the Morehouse School of Medicine represents a new endeavor for us. Our goal is to design a system that serves all Americans, including those that have an involvement with the corrections industry.
Executive Summary of In Need of Correction: The Prison Cycle of Health Care A forum_ held on September 28, 2005 to highlight research from the October 2005 American Journal of Public Health_ Sponsored byThe American Public Health Association in collaboration with The Community Voices Initiative of the
National Center for Primary Care at the Morehouse School of Medicine
On September 28th Dr. George Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, welcomed and introduced keynote speaker Dr. David Satcher, 16th Surgeon General and interim president of Morehouse School of Medicine; Marguerite Johnson, vice president for Programs in Health at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Henrie Treadwell, guest editor for the American Journal of Public Health and senior social scientist at the National Center for Primary Care. Following opening remarks, Judge Greg Mathis, of Michigan_s 36th District Court and the host of a nationally-syndicated reality-based courtroom television
show, moderated a distinguished panel of forum participants including Nicholas Freudenberg, professor and director of Urban Public Health at Hunter College in New York, Judge Steven Leifman of the Miami-Dade County Court in Florida; and Dr. Lester Wright, commissioner and chief medical officer of the Department of
Correction Services for the State of New York.
Together the speakers trained the spotlight on the growing body of evidence about the health of people in prisons, the relationship between our nation_s health care system and the prison population, and the implications and opportunities for community health. In their remarks and exchange, participants offered data, experience, and models for public health, corrections, communities, and the judiciary to begin to redirect and reorient society_s resources to improve health.
Root Causes for Prison Population Growth
In his keynote address, Dr. Satcher called the health care system _a major culprit_ in the explosive growth in the number of people incarcerated in prisons and jails across the country. _We as a nation have perhaps inadvertently used the prison system to deal with our mental health burden,_ he said. _People often say that the Los Angeles County Jail is the largest mental health system in this country. There_s a lot of truth to that,_ Satcher continued, _because so many of the people there are mentally ill and wouldn_t be there if they were not mentally ill._ In his remarks, Judge Leifman of Miami-Dade County Court explained how a U.S. Supreme Court ruling 40 years ago resulted in _the parade of misery_ visible in every criminal court. _Deinstitutionalization_ was the
first part of the High Court_s ruling made _with the best of intentions,_ Leifman said. _The second half of the opinion says if you_re going to deinstitutionalize, you must provide community-based treatment,_ he added.
_Unfortunately, the states only read the first part._ Before deinstitutionalization, some 560,000 people were living in state psychiatric institutions. _Last year more than 700,000 people with serious mental illnesses were arrested,_ Leifman noted. _Another 500,000 people with severe mental illness are out on probation._ Untreated or inadequately treated mental illness, the role of violence and trauma in fueling mental illness
_ especially among children and young people who witness violence _ panelists spoke frankly about these and other factors draining vulnerable communities of their health, youth, and manpower.
We lose more men every year to gun violence in America than we_ve lost in Iraq,_ Judge Greg Mathis said. _In many communities, it_s like a war zone. So the question becomes, if soldiers can return home with post-traumatic stress syndrome after 18 months on the front line, what do you think a young person who deals with it for 10, 15, or 20 years in the inner cities of America is going to be like?_ The connections between mental health, drugs, poverty, and disease show up in the courtroom as rage, hopelessness, and despair. According to Judge Mathis, young people who grow up in impoverished neighborhoods have two choices: to become a member of a street gang or a victim of one. _Ninety percent of
those young black males are forced to either participate as predator or prey,_ according to Judge Mathis. _We must see how we can approach the root causes of the reactions that we see in many who encounter the criminal justice system. We must see how we can address the issue in a way where the poor don_t automatically go to jail while the privileged get counseling and treatment._
Marguerite Johnson echoed the concerns of Judge Mathis. _Truly this population of individuals in the criminal justice system is invisible and forgotten. They enter the system with a myriad of complex physical and emotional issues and they emerge with even more._ And the experience of incarceration _ like any other trauma _ further threatens the health of those imprisoned. As Dr.. Satcher commented, research continues to show that traumatic experiences change people. _We can no longer separate environment and biology,_ Satcher explained.
_Environmental experiences lead to changes in the brain._ And as more and more men and women are locked up _ whether for a few days, a few weeks, or years on end _ the health effects and potential impact on society are staggering.
In the course of his remarks, researcher Nicholas Freudenberg provided this stunning statistic: _Each year more than 10 million people are locked up in our municipal and county jails,_ he said _ an increase of 265 percent in two decades. _In the last 20 years, police, drug, mental health, and employment policies have become a funnel into jail for our nation_s least healthy populations._
Opportunities for Public Health Collaboration
Dr. Lester Wright spoke directly to colleagues in public health when he said, _If I were again a county or state public health administrator, one of the first things that I_d look at would be the jails and prisons in my jurisdiction._ Why? Because _prison is far more a sentinel of health problems in the community than
an incubator of ill health,_ he suggested. Yet the culture of public health and perceptions about corrections often present barriers to collaboration. _We [in public health] tend to think of ourselves as knights on white horses riding out to save the victims of the system,_ said Wright. But if public health practitioners can begin _cross-cultural interface_ with corrections, the opportunities to improve health _ both for prisoners and for
the community _ are great. _We take the position that offering hepatitis B vaccine to all inmates who need it protects [prisoners] not only while they are inside, but the community afterward,_ he said. _It_s much easier to find those who need hepatitis B vaccine while they_re in Sing-Sing than it is in the South Bronx._ The first step for public health, Wright believes, is to acknowledge _the importance of understanding something about another culture and working within it._ As he says, _Corrections health is one of the few settings in
health care where health professionals are not working on our own turf . . . Unless we understand how security operates and why it has the rules and patterns that it does, unless we actively cultivate collaboration with security, we will spend inordinate amounts of our time and effort battling._ It_s the same as working in any unfamiliar culture; respect must come first. But Wright added, _Respect between health professionals and security professionals does not happen by chance. It takes proactive effort._ But with collaboration between public health and corrections, gains in tackling infectious diseases, such as
tuberculosis, can be significant. _In the past two years, the rate of new cases of TB diagnosed in our prison system has been lower than the rate of tuberculosis in New York City,_ Wright explained. _We haven_t had any cases of multiple-drug-resistant TB for the last several years. We_ve done this in partnership with the State Department of Health.
Collaboration generates opportunities for improvements in substance abuse treatment, and in treatment for sexually-transmitted diseases as well. And mental health treatment during incarceration and referral upon release is another collaborative opportunity that benefits individuals, their families, and communities as a whole. _If we_ve developed our partnerships between corrections and the rest of public health, we will have established referral mechanisms for those we identify with HIV or any other infectious or chronic disease so that they can continue to receive care,_ Wright concluded. _All of us in society can benefit from that.
Opportunities for Judicial Leadership
Our jails have become the largest psychiatric warehouses,_ Judge Leifman stated. _Since conditions are not conducive for treatment, people with mental illnesses stay in jail on average eight times longer than someone without mental illness,_ he explained _ even if they were imprisoned for the exact same reason. _The sad irony is that we did not de-institutionalize; we allowed for the trans-institutionalization of this population,_ said Leifman. _We have made our jails the asylum of the new millennium. Judge Leifman listed the consequences to a society of trans-institutionalization: _Increased homelessness, increased police injuries, increased police shootings of people with mental illnesses, [and] wasted critical tax dollars,_ are some of the nation_s symptoms. In one recent analysis, a Miami-Dade task force looked at the costs associated with 31 people with frequent arrests. _Thirty-one people cost $540,000 in one year_ for acute care alone, said Leifman. _Acute care is _jail, crisis stabilization, and emergency room care,_ he explained. _It would cost about a quarter of that to provide them with actual treatment and keep them out of our system._We as judges, corrections officers, police, mental health professionals are _so busy doing our jobs; no one was looking at the big picture,_ he admits. That_s why Leifman convened a two-day summit five years ago to bring together mental health providers and what he called _us non-traditional stakeholders _ the judiciary,
corrections, the police, the state attorney, the public defenders . . . It was really a melding of the mental health community with the criminal justice system._
The result was a concerted effort in Miami-Dade on _pre-arrest diversion programs,_ teaching police _how to identify people who have mental illness, de-escalate situations, and divert people into treatment,_ Leifman said. Many people are in jail for what he called _avoidable charges,_ such as resisting arrest. _What had happened is the officer wasn_t trained to appropriately deal with someone who had a mental illness. The situation escalated because the officers are trained to become aggressive when someone_s aggressive _ which is a good thing if they_re dealing with someone who is not paranoid but it_s a dangerous thing if they are,_ Leifman explained. Rather than be arrested on a felony, diversion into treatment keeps the public safer and saves time and money. In Miami-Dade County alone we were able to reduce our misdemeanor recidivism rate from over 70 percent to 18 percent last year,_ he said. _We have improved public safety; we have significantly reduced police injuries.
We_re saving our county over $2.5 million a year by keeping people in the mental health system rather than the correction system._ Judge Leifman is encouraged by the numbers, but he considers the benefits in human terms more significant. _We_re saving lives and more importantly we are decriminalizing mental illness._ He urged members of the judiciary to take the lead in pulling together both mental health and criminal justice stakeholders to address community issues. _You would build a political coalition that is extremely powerful,_ Leifman said. _Between the judiciary and law enforcement, [such a coalition] can have a larger impact on policy makers because it_s a different set of people approaching them on an issue that certain brands of conservatism have made more difficult to address.
Redirecting Resources & Removing Policy Barriers for Reentry to Society
In 2002, the New York City Independent Budget Office found that the full cost for one year of incarceration in New York City jails for one individual was $92,500,_ Nicholas Freudenberg told the forum participants. Contrast those figures with the much more modest costs of providing needed health and social services when they return to their communities _to enable them to turn their lives around,_ he said. Freudenberg reported on findings from research gathered while following 491 adolescent men and 476 adult women who were released from New York City jails between 1997 and 2002. _What we found shows the difficult life circumstances people leaving jail face and the extent to which local, state, and federal policies complicate rather than facilitate successful reentry from jail,_ he explained. _Our study also shows that people leaving jail can make positive changes in their lives and that modifying Medicaid, employment, and housing policies could contribute to significant reductions in recidivism._
Young men who had a job after release were two-thirds less likely to be arrested again, for example. But other factors held the same power and promise for successful reentry into community life, the study found. _Unexpectedly we found that having health insurance _ which for this population was primarily Medicaid
_ reduced the likelihood of arrest [in young men] by more than two-thirds,_ Freudenberg noted. _And for the women, having health insurance in the year after release lowered the risk of re-arrest by more than 80 percent._
Yet current federal and state policies allow for terminating Medicaid when a person is incarcerated. _Leaving jail without health insurance makes it more difficult for people to get prescription drugs for psychiatric conditions, HIV and other sexually-transmitted illnesses, and chronic conditions like asthma and diabetes,_ said Freudenberg. _It also makes it harder for people returning from jail to get the basic health care that can manage and prevent health problems and avoid expensive hospitalizations and emergency room visits._ In the
question-and-answer portion of the forum, Judge Leifman concurred with the study_s findings by adding: _We really need to address some of these issues with policy makers because there are a lot of ridiculous systems in place that don_t work._ Employment policies are another barrier, Freudenberg noted. _We need to discuss a legislative proposal that would remove the requirement for seeking employment [that the applicant] disclose a felony conviction. Not every job requires disclosing,_ he said. _Dozens of occupations_ could be opened up to individuals returning to their communities, Freudenberg suggested _ and he used working as a barber as an example. _Many people learn how to be a barber in prison and can_t practice,_ he said. A record can be a barrier in many professions, Judge Mathis told participants. Arrested as a juvenile himself,
Mathis told how he spent eight months in prison _ _ at a cost of $35,000,_ he said _ compared to a year in college, which at the time was $6,000. _Upon completing college, completing law school, passing the bar exam, I was not allowed to practice for three years because of my juvenile record,_ Mathis told the group. For every one person like Judge Mathis who surmounts barriers, communities lose the talents and energy of many dozens who cannot. But Freudenberg_s data suggest that reducing barriers to employment could generate
many more success stories. He advocated _rethinking national goals for people leaving jail_ and _redirecting the wave of money now being spent_ on job training and placement and health care. _To sustain improvements in public safety over the long term and to make more money available for other pressing needs _ like public education, health care, and rebuilding our infrastructures,_ Freudenberg concluded, _it_s time for public health to go to jail._
At the conclusion of the session, panelists urged their audience to use the data, examples, and stories from the forum and the October 2005 American Journal of Public Health to bring prison health to the forefront of community concerns and collaborative efforts. In thanking the panelists, writers, and editors that made the forum possible, Henrie Treadwell charged listeners to build on their combined knowledge. _We are hoping that with the shoulders of so many of you to stand upon that today we will have more support to speak on this important issue,_she said. _The people displaced by Katrina pale in comparison to
the people displaced by our criminal justice system. We hope that from this day forward the topic of prison health and working with those who have been in prison will no longer be one we fear to talk about,_ Treadwell concluded, _but in fact one we must talk about because we are all Americans whether we have been in prison or not.
And a (edited) piece on a Sheriff in Arizona who is doing his own little bit for incarceration…..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio#changes_to_jailoperations
Joseph M. (Joe) Arpaio is a law enforcement officer and the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, United States.
Arpaio has been called "America's Toughest Sheriff" for his controversial approach to operating the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, mainly in regard to his treatment of inmates. He has a large number of vocal supporters for his toughness on crime and criminals. Many civil libertarians denounce him for what they believe to be a willingness to ignore constitutional rights in favor of blind enforcement. Arpaio has stated that his goal is to have the most populated jail in the country.
"America's Toughest Sheriff"
Arpaio successfully campaigned for the office of Maricopa County Sheriff in 1992. Since then, he has successfully won re-election in 1996, 2000, and 2004 with considerable support of the county voters. His official re-election web site is http://www.sheriffjoe.org.
An April 2001 article in Harper's magazine by Barry Graham referred to him as "a loving husband, proud father, idealist, megalomaniac, liar, and bully. His nose is purple, his neck is red, and he has the charm of Archie Bunker."
During his tenure as Maricopa County Sheriff, Arpaio has instituted or strengthened several of the following community programs: bicycle registration child identification and fingerprinting, Operation Identification (for marking valuables),Operation Notification (which identifies business owners during times of emergency), Project Lifeline (which provides free cellular phones to domestic violence victims),S.T.A.R.S. (Sheriffs Teaching Abuse Resistance to Students),* an annual summer camp for kids near Payson.
One of the most successful programs maintained by Arpaio is the all-volunteer Posse program. Though Maricopa County operated the Posse for 50 years prior to Arpaio's election, Arpaio greatly expanded the program through heavy recruiting. The volunteers perform many duties for the sheriff's office:
* search and rescue, prisoner transport,traffic control,backup for sworn, deputies, office administrative duties, Holiday Mall Patrol (which provides motorist assistance and security for shoppers during the holiday shopping season, deadbeat parent details targeting men and women with outstanding arrest warrants for failure to pay child support.
Arpaio has also included on the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office website an online deck of cards featuring pictures of deadbeat parents, amounts owed and last known whereabouts. Later, he published mugshots of all inmates booked into the county jail, which are available for viewing on the county website for three days after an inmate's arrest.
He attends some of the Phoenix police community activities personally, going as far as making free autograph show appearances several times a year.
Changes to Jail Operations
Arpaio believes that inmates should be treated as harshly as legally possible to emphasize the punishment aspect of their incarceration. Thus, upon his initial election, Arpaio began instituting the controversial changes for which he would later become noted.
Arpaio began to serve inmates surplus food (mainly outdated and oxidized green bologna) and limited meals to twice daily. Meal costs would be reduced to 90 cents per day; as of 2007 Arpaio states that he has managed to reduce costs to 30 cents per day. Certain food items were banned from the county jail, mainly coffee (which also reduced "coffee attacks" on guards), but later salt and pepper were removed from the jail (at a purported taxpayer savings of $20,000/year).
Arpaio banned smoking in the county jail. He also removed pornographic magazines (the ban was later upheld in court) and weightlifting equipment. Entertainment was limited to G-rated movies; the cable TV system (mandated by court order) was severely blocked by Arpaio to limit viewing to those stations Arpaio deems to be "educational", mainly Animal Planet, Disney Channel, The Weather Channel, A&E, CNN, and the local government access channel.
Arpaio also instituted a program for inmates to study while in jail and to try to recover from drug abuse. Hard Knocks High lays claim as the only approved high school program in any American jail. Another jail program, called ALPHA, is
aimed solely at getting inmates away from drug abuse.
In October 2005, Arpaio started mandatory two-week English classes for non-English-speaking inmates at his jails. Classes last two hours a day. The curriculum comprises the three branches of government, how a bill becomes law, state government, law enforcement and court services, and jailhouse "situational" terminology. At the end of the two-week course, inmates are required to take a test to see how well they have learned about American government, the words to God Bless America, and the communication of health and safety needs. In response to critics, Arpaio responded, "These inmates happen to be incarcerated in the United States of America and in Maricopa County where I run the jails. We speak English here, not foreign languages."
In February 2007, Arpaio instituted an in-house radio station, KJOE, which broadcasts classical music, opera, Frank Sinatra hits, obscenity-free patriotic music, and educational programming, from the basement of the county jail. The station airs four hours each day, five days a week. In March of 2007, the Maricopa County Jail hosted "Inmate Idol"[2], a takeoff on the popular TV show.
Chain Gangs
Shortly after taking office, Arpaio reinstituted chain gangs, the controversial form of inmate labor which had been virtually eliminated in the United States.
Arpaio believes that chain gangs are not a form of punishment, but of rehabilitation. Inmates who are low-risk but with a history of jail incidents can apply to serve as free labor. Inmates work eight-hours a day, six days a week (Sundays off), mainly outside. The inmates wear traditional black-and-white striped uniforms (see below for more details) with a cap to protect against the desert heat. Inmates perform such tasks as creating fire breaks, removing trash, and burying deceased indigent persons in the county cemetery.
Arpaio also expanded the chain gang concept by instituting the world's first female chain gang. Female inmates work seven hours a day (7 AM to 2 PM), six days a week. Arpaio has also instituted the world's first all-juvenile chain gang
Think Pink
One of Arpaio's most noted changes was the introduction of pink underwear. Arpaio noted that the traditional white underwear, labeled with Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, was being smuggled out of the jails and sold on the streets. Arpaio thus had the underwear dyed pink, believing that pink is not considered a "macho" color, and would not be stolen. Once the public learned of the change, requests came in for orders, and Arpaio began selling customized pink boxers (with the Maricopa County Sheriff's logo and "Go Joe") as a fund-raiser for sheriff's operations.
Arpaio subsequently introduced pink handcuffs among sheriff's deputies, who were taking the traditional silver-colored ones. Later, when Arpaio learned that the color pink has a known psychological calming effect, he began dyeing sheets, socks, towels, and all other fabric items in pink.
The outer uniform is not pink, but traditional black-and-white. This was part of another Arpaio-instituted change. One day, allegedly, Arpaio thought he saw an inmate escapee in the then-existing sea-green inmate uniform outside the jail (it turned out to be a hospital worker in scrubs). Later, he noted that the orange uniforms of the chain gangs were similar to uniforms used by county workers (the orange being needed for safety). Believing that inmates should be easily identifiable should they escape, Arpaio re-instituted the traditional black-and-white inmate uniforms, which even with the advent of everything else being pink has not changed.
Tent City
The most noted, and controversial, of Arpaio's ideas was the set-up of "Tent City" as an extension of the Maricopa County Jail. When Arpaio took office, inmates were routinely being released early due to overcrowding. Arpaio believed that "courts, not head count" should determine when an inmate is released, and that no officer should be deterred from making an arrest for fear that the inmate would be released due to jail overcrowding.
However, a new jail would have cost Maricopa County taxpayers around US$70 million. So instead, Arpaio obtained used tents from the military, and established Tent City in a parking lot adjacent to one of the jail facilities. As an announcement to future inmates that they should not expect early release upon overcrowding, but more tents instead, Arpaio added a (pink neon) "Vacancy" sign to the outside of Tent City. The original sign was destroyed in an inmate riot, but was quickly replaced. A second Tent City was opened in 1996 adjacent to another jail facility, and houses female inmates.
During the summer of 2003, when outside temperatures exceeded 110 °F (43 °C), which is higher than average, Arpaio said to complaining inmates, "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn't commit any crimes, so shut your mouths." Inmates were given permission to wear only their pink underwear.
Tent City has been criticized by groups contending these are violations of human and constitutional rights, and simultaneously praised by those favoring Arpaio's "get tough on crime" approach.
In response to requests, the Sheriff's office offers group tours of its unique and controversial Tent City. In addition, Arpaio has instituted "S.M.A.R.T." Tents (Shocking Mainstream Adolescents into Resisting Temptation), a voluntary program for middle-school students who are bussed to an area adjacent to Tent City and, for the next 24 hours, are shown the reality of jail life.
Underwear March
In 2005, inmates were walked from neighboring jails to the newly opened Lower Buckeye Jail, wearing only their boxers and sandals so that they could not hide contraband during transport. This occurrence was reported widely in the media and has been referred to as the underwear march."It's a security issue," Arpaio said. "If you let them wear their clothes, they can conceal the fake keys and everything else. Because of the media spectacle resulting from the underwear march, it would also be regarded as a perp walk.
Controversy and Criticism
Some feel that Sheriff Arpaio's actions are based less on a desire to serve the public and to lower crime, but more on demagoguery and grandstanding that hurt the public welfare. Amnesty International issued a report critical of the treatment of inmates in Maricopa County facilities. Criticism has resulted due to lawsuits filed against the sheriff’s office by family members of inmates who died in jail custody and in high-speed pursuits involving deputies. The lawsuits have cost Maricopa County more than $13.7 million in settlement claims. By mid-year 2007, more than $50 million in claims had been filed against the sheriffs office and Maricopa County.
The Scott Norberg Case
One major controversy includes the 1996 death of inmate Scott Norberg while he was in custody. Norberg was arrested for chasing two young girls in Mesa, Arizona. Arpaio's office repeatedly claimed Norberg was also high on methamphetamine, but a blood toxicology performed post-mortem conclusively proved this was not true. Norberg did, however, have methamphetamine in his urine, proving that he had used the drug earlier that day. During his internment, evidence suggests detention officers shocked Norberg several times with a stun-gun. According to an investigation by Amnesty International, Norberg was already handcuffed and face down when officers dragged him from his cell and placed him in a restraint chair with a towel covering his face. After Norberg's corpse was discovered, detention officers accused Norberg of attacking them as they were trying to restrain him. The cause of his death, according to the Maricopa County medical examiner, was due to "positional asphyxia". Sheriff Arpaio investigated and subsequently cleared detention officers of any criminal wrongdoing.
Norberg’s parents filed a lawsuit against Joe Arpaio and his office. The lawsuit was settled for $8.25 million (USD) following a highly contentious legal battle. Despite vowing to never settle, the case quickly closed after it was disclosed the Sheriff's office had destroyed key evidence in the case.
The Brian Crenshaw Case
Brian Crenshaw was a blind inmate allegedly beaten into a coma by guards working under Arpaio. Crenshaw suffered injuries that included a perforated intestine and a broken neck. He later died at a local hospital. When asked about the incident, Arpaio insisted, "The man fell off a bunk."
Illegal Immigrants
In 2005, Arizona passed a law making it a felony, punishable by up to 2 years in jail, to smuggle someone across the border. Maricopa County Attorney Andrew P. Thomas has issued a legal opinion that those being smuggled can be considered co-conspirators to the smuggling and can be charged under the same law. Under this opinion, Arpaio has instructed his deputies and members of his civilian posse to round up and arrest suspected illegal aliens. Arpaio said to Fox News, "My message is clear: If you come here and I catch you, you're going straight to jail. [...] I'm not going to turn these people over to federal authorities so they can have a free ride back to Mexico. I'll give them a free ride to my jail."To date, Arpaio has arrested at least 263 people under this program.
The county attorney's legal opinion is being challenged in court. Many critics, including two of the co-authors of the Arizona anti-smuggling law, claim that Thomas and Arpaio are misusing the statute, which was meant only for human smugglers and not for illegal immigrants who are being smuggled.[19]
Paris Hilton
In May 2007, Arpaio was featured in the entertainment press for publicly asking Los Angeles authorities to transfer Paris Hilton to Maricopa County to serve her jail sentence. His requests were "respectfully declined."[21]
Recall Petition
In November 2007, efforts began to recall Joe Arpaio and Maricopa County Prosecutor, Andrew P. Thomas from office.[27] The grounds for the recall effort is cited as "Disobeying and violating the United States Constitution and abuse of power," referring to excessive spending by the Sheriff, profiling of illegal immigrants, and overall dissatisfaction with the office.If successful, the recall would have been part of the November 2008 ballot; however, on February 28, 2008, the Arizona Republic announced that the recall petition had failed.
That’s All Folks!
