Report Charges Abuse and Torture at State Prison

The Human Rights Coalition started investigating conditions of prisoners in solitary confinement at the State Correctional Institution in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania in December, 2009 when an inmate denied mental health treatment committed suicide. Their report is based on written information obtained from prisoners who tell of horrendous living conditions, racial slurs, degradation and physical abuse from the guards, and an unfair misconduct process that keeps adding to their time in solitary confinement.

Investigator Amanda Johnson says prisoners protesting mistreatment in September 2010 were sprayed with excessive amounts of chemicals, then left in their cells for days without showers or medical treatment and the spray burning their skin. One prisoner says he returned his tray and utensils through the food slot after a meal, as rules require, but a guard threw the spoon back into the cell and wrote up a misconduct charge.

Johnson says the misuse of restraint chairs amounts to torture, with prisoners strapped naked into the chairs where they may be left untended for 12 to 15 hours at a time and forced to soil themselves.

Prisoners' grievances are dismissed 98% of the time, according to Johnson, who got the statistics from a "right to know" request, but a group of nine prisoners protesting an assault last week got more more positive results: the victim received medical treatment and the two guards accused of assault were removed from the unit.

Johnson wants the abuse to stop; wants the prison administration to acknowledge what's happening there; wants lawyers to help prisoners file class action lawsuits against their abuse; and she hopes more people will be concerned about human rights.

Pittsburgh Prison Probe

A union official with Western Penitentiary (SCI-Pittsburgh) says 8 guards have been suspended without pay because of an unspecified ethics investigation. However, state prison official are unwilling to confirm or deny that. David Mandella, vice president of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association, says one guard has missed 75 working days without being told specifically what's being investigated. A spokeswoman says the Superintendent at SCI-Pittsburgh has declined to comment on the investigation.
Mandella says the guards are appealing their suspensions to the Pennsylvania Civil Service Commission.
U.S. and Allegheny County prosecutors are not commenting on whether they are involved in the investigation.

Pennsylvania Needs Sentencing Reform Say Politicians

Politicians and a criminology professor say the prison system in Pennsylvania must be reformed and the best way to do it is through legislation.

At a press conference held in Oakland on Friday, Auditor General Jack Wagner, state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, Al Blumstein, a criminologist and professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Director of the National Consortium on Violence Research called for legislation to stem the growth of Pennsylvania's prison population, the fastest growing in the nation.

Greenleaf has legislation, Senate Bill 100 is before his committee now. It is a package of alternative sentencing reform which calls for money for treatment and re-entry programs for parolees.

He noted that those who don't care about people should care about the money. Each prisoner costs about 33,000 a year to maintain and the state plans on spending $860 million in the next few years to build four new prisons.

The state's prison population is 53,000 - five times greater than it was 30 years ago. Forty percent of the prisoners are non-violent offenders.

Greenleaf said states such as New York and California have been successful in lowering their prison populations by working to keep nonviolent offenders out of jail.

PA Prison Population Levels, Inmates Coming Back

The 2,121 Pennsylvania inmates being housed in Virginia and Michigan will return to the Commonwealth by the end of the year, according to Governor Tom Corbett’s pick for Corrections Secretary.

Pennsylvania’s prison population leveled off in 2010, after a spike due in part to Governor Rendell’s 2008 parole moratorium. Numbers have dropped enough that acting Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said he plans on bringing those prisoners back to Pennsylvania. He told members of the House Appropriations Committee the move will save $20 million. “And that $20 million is a net. So it includes the increased cost of staffing some of the module units we were talking about earlier, so we can house people now,” he said.

Pennsylvania is paying Michigan and Virginia $62 a day for every exported inmate. That’s more than $131,000 a day total, or $920,000 a week. Wetzel said the total is much more expensive than housing them at Pennsylvania facilities. “For instance, for us to open up a housing unit, there’s a ramp-up cost and there’s an initial cost. When we get that housing unit to about 90 percent, we’re not paying – if we lose ten inmates or gain ten inmates – we’re not paying dollar for dollar for every one of those inmates. Whereas when we send them out of state we pay dollar for dollar, and we also pay dollar for dollar for their medical,” he said.

The commonwealth houses a bit more than 51,000 total prisoners. Governor Corbett wants to increase Corrections funding from $1.7 to $1.9 billion in this year’s budget.

DeWeese: Prison Cancellation Will Cost 700 Jobs

Democratic State Representative Bill DeWeese contends the Corbett Administration's decision to cancel a planned 200-million dollar state prison was politically motivated.
DeWeese says Governor Tom Corbett's cancellation of the Fayette County facility isn't about cost-savings and need, but has more to do with the fact Corbett charged the lawmaker with theft and conspiracy in December 2009, for allegedly campaigning with state resources.
The prison would have been located within DeWeese's district.

"He and I have had some challenges, to be polite and euphemistic, relative to the past. But that's in another arena. He's the chief executive of 12.6 million people. My 60-thousand folks elected me to go to Harrisburg and serve, and this is an aggressive slap in the face."

DeWeese says construction on the prison would have begun in a matter of weeks, and the cancelation will cost the district more than 700 jobs.
In the press release announcing the move, Acting Corrections Secretary John Wetzel said the 200-million dollar facility isn't needed, and that other prisons are under-utilized.
DeWeese questions the argument, pointing out Pennsylvania is still exporting prisoners to Michigan and Virginia.
Corbett's spokesman did not respond to calls for comment.

Down Economy, More Inmates Pose Problems for PA

A Franklin County prison warden is poised to take the helm of the state corrections department, pending Senate approval.
John Wetzel says he's looking forward to the challenge of curbing the commonwealth's increasing prison population.
As State Corrections Secretary, Wetzel would oversee operations of all prison facilities and about 52-thousand inmates.
With Governor-elect Tom Corbett's pledge to cut spending and not increase taxes, Wetzel says he'll need to make some tough decisions in order to keep the ever-growing inmate population at bay.

"When we use prison for someone who could be managed in the community or managed at the county level, then we're spending money we don't need to spend. But conversely and one of the key parts of our system, when we put them on too low a level of that continuum, we risk public safety."

Wetzel says moving inmates out of state prison can cut down on costs, but he says public safety also needs to be considered.
"Looking at everyone who's in state prisons. Do they need to be there? Can they be more effectively managed in the community, at the county level or a community corrections setting?"

Wetzel says his work on the county level has prepared him for the role of secretary since he's amassed knowledge from a security and policy standpoint on the front lines.
Like other cabinet appointees, Wetzel will need to be confirmed by the Senate.

Marijuana Discussed

A panel debated the pros and cons of marijuana legalization in Pittsburgh on Friday. The debate, entitled Medical and Recreational Marijuana: Scientific, Legal and Societal Considerations featured several local panelists with opposing views.

The panel was held after California voters Tuesday rejected a proposal to legalize marijuana for recreational use and there is a bill in the Pennsylvania legislature to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. Among the speakers was Lisa Freeland, a federal public defender for the Western District of Pennsylvania. She said the money spent on law enforcement and incarceration for non-violent drug offenders would be better spent on education and drug treatment.

"One of the things we know particularly with non-violent drug offenders is that the majority of offenders that are incarcerated today suffer from drug addiction. So, putting some money into treatment and alternatives to incarceration would not only shift the focus of our policy but also yield substantial savings I believe."

Another speaker Frederick Thieman, former US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania is opposed to the legalization of marijuana. He said there is not enough research done on marijuana to consider legalizing the drug.

"The subject has not been researched well enough and breaking the status quo so to say of non-legality right now is a dangerous step in terms of the overall costs to society unless the topic is researched to a much greater degree."

Prison Reform Bill Moving Forward

A bill reducing Pennsylvania’s state prison population is expected to land on Governor Rendell’s desk this week.
A former corrections secretary estimates thousands of people end up back in state prisons each year, due to technical parole violations.
That includes offenses like missing a meeting with an officer, or not filing an address change with the state.
This bill would give parole boards the power to impose alternative sentences, so technical offenders don’t need to go back to prison.
Andy Hoover of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania explains the measure also allows inmates with short-term sentences to finish up required rehabilitative courses after they’ve been released.
Right now, they need to stay in prison until the programs are complete.

"There are a number of inmates who are ending up in state prisons with less than a year to serve until they reach their minimum. But because of these programming requirements, they end up serving more than the minimum, because they can’t finish the programming in that short amount of time."

The bill’s sponsor is Republican Senator Stewart Greenleaf of Montgomery County...

"We have a criminal justice system that’s not working. We are building new penitentiaries every year at 200 million dollars a year – at least one new penitentiary every year. And it costs 50 to 60 million dollars to operate these facilities."


Lawmakers estimate the bill could save more than 30 million dollars a year in prison costs.

State Reps Tour PA Prisons

Members of the House Judiciary Committee are wrapping up a three-day tour of Pennsylvania prisons.

Representative Ronald Waters says he and his colleagues are speaking with wardens, district attorneys, prison guards and inmates to better understand what the state could do to reduce overcrowding and lower the $2 billion Department of Corrections budget.

Waters says Pennsylvania is also planning to build “up to four” more prisons at a cost of $200 million apiece.

“They hold about 2,000 inmates, so that’s a capital investment of about $100,000 per person just to build these things,” says Waters.

Waters says other states have reduced their prisoner counts with no detriment to public safety. He says in Michigan, good policy has reduced the prison population so much that Pennsylvania has sent thousands of its inmates there until the new prisons can be built.

The House is reviewing several Senate bills that would reduce the prison population by easing parole violation sanctions, using alternative sentencing, and reducing the minimum incarceration time before a prisoner can be sent to a prerelease center.

Waters says the tour will help identify “best practice” for Pennsylvania prison policy.

Panel Suggestons Could Save $457 Million

The bipartisan commission created by the Pennsylvania Senate has issued its report identifying cost-saving measures in state government. The Senate Government Management and Cost Study Commission was made up of members of the public and private sectors and held 7 public hearings and reviewed e-mails from Pennsylvanians in completing its review of state departments and expenditures.
The co-chair, State Senator Daylin Leach of Montgomery County, says the report provides more than 40 recommendations with a potential savings of $457 million over 3 years. Leach says the suggestions include changes in the Corrections and Public Welfare Departments, reductions and consolidation of the legislature's caucus staff functions, reviewing the current per diem reimbursement for lawmakers and possibly replace it with a receipts-based system, and an online database of state spending that is accessible by the public.
Leach says they are recommending that a non-partisan office be created to continue to monitor expenditures in order to find where more money can be saved..."It's not just about spending money and not spending money, it's about doing things smartly, doing things more efficiently. If we could spend a little bit of money having an office that is saving hundreds of millions of dollars every year, that would be clearly worth it."

Other recommendations include:

-Savings of over $110 million over three years within the Department of
Corrections after examining areas that include: alternative sentencing
guidelines, parole and re-entry services, pre-release guidelines,
problem-solving courts and graduated sanctioning processes for state
parole violators.
-Reducing the number of state vehicles within the Department of General
Services.
-Further investigation of the Department of Public Welfare’s programs
to build upon a 2009 Auditor General’s audit report at an estimated
cost savings of $380 million or more.
-Consolidate school district administrative functions
-Begin comprehensive reviews of the Pennsylvania Department of
Community and Economic Development’s grants and loan programs.

Chef Speaks About Life Behind Bars and Over A Stove

Chef Jeff Henderson Jeff Henderson, a chef on the Food Channel spoke to local ex-offenders and at-risk youth in Homestead on Thursday.

Eugene Ziegler was among the audience members who asked Chef Jeff Henderson for advice. Ziegler is a 52 year old Marine Veteran and trained cook. He’s also a recovering drug addict and ex-offender. He’s got post-traumatic stress disorder. And he says, low self-esteem. It’s been hard for him to find work.

Like Ziegler, Henderson is a former felon. A former drug-trafficker, he spent ten years in prison where he learned to cook. Upon release, he worked his way up to becoming an executive chef at top restaurants, got a TV show and authored a book.
Although he achieved fame as a chef, Henderson said he’s often asked to speak to ex-felons and at-risk youth about his life.

Makinma Gustave, 35, has been in and out of prison over the last eight years. The Homestead woman said she finds Henderson’s story inspiring.

Ex-offenders have a higher unemployment rate than the general public.

State Prison Reform Legislation in the House

The State Senate has passed prison reform legislation to reduce the prison population, lower the rate of recidivism and reduce spiraling costs. The bill’s sponsor and other supporters are urging passage in the House.

The author--Republican Senator Stewart Greenleaf of Bucks and Montgomery Counties-- says prison expenditures have gone from $110 million in 1980 to $1.8 billion, while the inmate population has ballooned from 8000 to 51,000. State population has only gone up 4- or 5%, which Greenleaf says shows the system isn't working.

The current annual increase of 2000 inmates means Pennsylvania would have to build a new prison every year at a cost of about $200 million and $60 million a year to maintain. Meanwhile, recidivism is 46% and violent crime continues to go up. The state now spends more on prisons than on higher education, says Greenleaf. While it’s important to be tough on crime, he says it’s also important to be smart on crime.

Other states, says Greenleaf, have enacted reforms that reduce crime, rehabilitate offenders, and save money. New York is reducing its prison population by 1000 inmates per year as violent crime goes down. Virginia and Michigan are housing thousands of Pennsylvania inmates because their reforms have freed up space.

Greenleaf’s legislation would reform parole and sentencing policies to reduce the numbers of non-violent offenders in jail.

Democratic Representative Ronald Waters of Philadelphia is chairman of the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus. He says African-Americans are about 12- to 13% of the general population but are 45- to 50% of the prison population. Poor people are also over-represented, a category which can cross color lines but includes many people of color. Good attorneys are often out of reach for the poor and minorities. He’s visited inmates who say they were coerced with threats of long sentences if they insisted on their day in court, so they plead for a short sentence, not realizing what an adverse and long-term effect a conviction would have on their lives.

Waters says laws reflecting a “lock them up and throw away the key” philosophy have not made communities safer but have increased prison populations and expenditures disastrously. With 90% of inmates coming out of jail eventually, it makes much more sense, he says, to use resources to help them turn their lives around and become contributing members of society.

Waters says the House will amend Senator Greenleaf’s bills to reflect concerns expressed by district attorneys and hopefully send it back to the Senate. He thinks Governor Rendell will sign the reform legislation.

Senator Hopes to Reduce Prison Population

The Pennsylvania Senate is reviewing legislation aimed at reducing prison overcrowding Tuesday.

Sponsoring Senator Stewart Greenleaf says if passed, the three bills would save the state $100 million over the next three years.

“We can be tough on crime, but we can also be smart on crime,” says Greenleaf.

Greenleaf says one of the bills would help judges identify offenders unlikely to commit crimes again. The Bucks County Republican says these nonviolent offenders could be placed in underused, alternative sentencing programs like rehab and motivational boot camp, instead of overcrowding state prisons.

The second bill would overturn a regulation requiring inmates to spend nine months in prison before being moved to a prerelease center. Greenleaf says this rule often leads to offenders with short sentences serving much longer than necessary.

The third measure would attempt to stop prison sentences for minor parole violations.

“Each violation would have to be evaluated, whether it’s a high-, medium-, or low-range violation,” says Greenleaf. “Not everybody has to be sent back to jail for two years, at $70,000 for two years, because they missed a meeting.”

Senator Greenleaf says the state is currently building three prisons, at a cost of $200 million apiece. He says in addition, it costs $50-60 million per year to run each facility.

Greenleaf says the three new state prisons under construction will immediately be filled upon their 2013 openings.

Pa. Prisoner Relocation Nearly Complete

An effort to transfer 2,000 Pennsylvania prisoners to vacant Michigan and Virginia facilities should be finished before May.

Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton says about 1,100 inmates have finished the bus trip to Michigan, while about 500 are in Virginia. The remaining 400 will be sent to Virginia.

McNaughton says overcrowding had brought up safety issues in Pennsylvania prisons, so the other states will house the prisoners until four new state prisons can be built.

She says the criteria for an inmate to be moved was broad.

“It was going to be inmates who had at least three years left on their sentences to serve,” says McNaughton. “They have no serious medical conditions or mental health issues or behavior issues, and we were also looking at inmates who had very few, if any, visitors.”

McNaughton says a virtual visitation program allows family members to talk with relocated inmates via closed-circuit television at some state prisons, and at sites in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

McNaughton says it is her department’s policy to tell a prisoner he or she is moving about a day before the relocation occurs. She says the prisoner is then prevented from calling anyone to thwart any possible escape attempts.

State Prisons No Longer Need Tower Guards

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections will be reducing the tower staffing levels at five prisons. As a result of technological upgrades and increased perimeter security guards in towers are not needed. Department of Corrections (DOC) spokesperson Susan McNaughton says the move will reduce overtime hours because the guards who normally work in the towers will be used in other areas of the prisons. McNaughton says the DOC can expect to save nearly $5 million between the five prisons.

Corrections Chief Defends Budget Increase

The head of Pennsylvania's Department of Corrections is asking for more money this year. He says the request is justified.
Governor Ed Rendell has described this year's budget as "status quo," with most departments receiving level or slightly reduced spending.
However, a major exception is Corrections, which would see a 137 million dollar increase to its 1.75 billion dollar budget.
Secretary Jeffery Beard says the funding is needed to maintain control of an ever-growing prison population.
Without the proper staffing, and the ability to outsource some prisoners from overcrowded facilities, Beard says there could be violence.

"And we're going to go back to where we were in the late 1980s, where we had serious riots at Camp Hill. We had riots at Huntington, at Rock View. And that was all because we didn't have the resources, and we had too many inmates in our system, and we didn't have a place to put them."

Beard told members of the House Appropriations Committee Pennsylvania currently has more than 51-thousand people in its corrections system.

Study Shows Inconsistencies With Prison Terms

A new report indicates indicates inconsistencies in prison sentences for similar crimes in Pennsylvania. The Senate and House Judiciary Committees commissioned the University of Pennsylvania's Criminal Law Research Group to study sentencing guidelines in state law. Senate Judiciary Committee Democratic Chairman Daylin Leach says the report found several instances where the criminal code defines offenses that are inconsistent with the relative seriousness of the offense as compared to other offenses..."for one crime you might have a 90 day maximum sentence and another similar offense might have a 15 year maximum. That's not rational nor fair."
Leach says one way to correct the disparity in sentencing is to cut back on mandatory minimum sentences..."With the same crime, there may be 2 defendants who have totally different levels of intent, levels of conduct, and we treat them the same in mandatory way. That's not smart."
The Montgomery County lawmaker says the state has to stop increasing penalties for crimes unless it's called for by empirical data..."we'll take a crime and increase the penalty, then increase it again a year later, not because anything's happened, but because some legislator wants to look tough on crime." He says the state has to spend $200 million a year annually for the foreseeable future to build prisons because per capita as a state, Pennsylvania is incarcerating more people than almost any other place. A new federal report indicates that Pennsylvania's prison population grew by 9.1% from 2007 to 2008....more than any other state.
Leach says there is legislation that could help to eliminate disparities in sentences but an overhaul is needed and whether "we have the will to do an overhaul is questionable."

Corrections Sec. Says He Has Too Many Inmates

The head of the state’s prisons went before the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday to plead his case for help in dealing with the growing inmate population. Despite falling crime rates the number of people held in Pennsylvania Corrections Department facilities continues to grow. Corrections Secretary Jeffery Beard says last year’s temporary moratorium on parole compounded the problem. He says the state needs to look at options other than incarceration for non violent offenders and to think twice about sending a parolee to jail if they have small “technical” violation of their parole terms. The system has approximately 51,000 inmates in a system designed for 49,000. The state plans to add 8,000 new beds by 2013 but Beard says that may not be enough at the current rate of growth. The state plans to send as many as 2,000 inmates to prisons outside of Pennsylvania early next year.

Study: Trying Kids as Adults Expensive, Ineffective

A new study from the University of Texas at Austin says underage offenders sentenced as adults are more likely to return to prison than those tried as juveniles. Lead author and public affairs professor Michele Deitch says in Pennsylvania, current law allows kids’ cases to transfer to adult courts, and from there, harsh mandatory sentences can victimize juveniles. She says theoretically, a seven-year-old convicted of murder would serve life without parole in an adult prison. Not that it would definitely be a long term; Deitch says she found that imprisoned children are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than their adult counterparts.

Deitch says as a compromise between a fair punishment and protecting kids, many states have introduced ‘blended sentencing.’ “Typically, it will be a juvenile sentence combined with a suspended adult sentence, and when the kid reaches the age of majority in that state, they go back before the judge, who gets to take a second look at them and figure out, ‘Did they get a chance to rehabilitate? Did they take advantage of programmatics, opportunities in the juvenile prison?’” says Deitch.

She says the blended method would be more effective than the state’s current system, because kids who go through the adult system have a higher recidivism rate and are more than twice as expensive to house. Deitch says this needless waste of taxpayer money is exacerbated by the lack of severity of many kids’ crimes. “Almost half of them are there for property offenses or even public order offenses, so these are not necessarily the headline-worthy cases. We’re finding extreme arbitrariness, unpredictability and even racial disparities in decisions about whether a child should be transferred to an adult court,” says Deitch.

She says lawmakers need to recognize there are middle-ground solutions. “We could still recognize that children are children, and that they have the potential to change and rehabilitate, and that they’re not as blameworthy as adults, and so we shouldn’t be posing as harsh sentences on them,” says Deitch.