Archive for Juvenile Justice

| October 18, 2011
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The Polk County Incarceration Scandal

Despite the advances being made in nearby Texas, Florida finds itself at the middle of a controversy about it’s treatment of youth offenders. Let’s start withthis video report from Fox News:

Polk jail at center of debate over jailing juveniles : MyFoxTAMPABAY.com

Chase Purdy, a writer for The Ledger, called it “duelling press conferences.” I think that’s apt. Sheriff Judd’s rather dismissive comment about “y’all silly people,” when addressing his opponents is annoyingly condescending, although his point seems on the surface to be a good one. How can the ACLU complain without having visited the facility in question?

That first impression lacks both context and nuance. Yes, it may well be much more cost effective than their prior approach, but can it be as cost effective as the Texas way? There is still a huge sum of public money needed to incarcerate someone. Far less funding is required to rehabilitate and reintegrate them into society. The numbers demonstrably prove that, as does the increasing number of states moving away from a “lock ’em up” mentality about juveniles.

One thing that needs clarification is the language used. To clarify the difference jails are basically short term holding tanks and are operated by the county. Prisons on the other hand are run by the state and are geared toward long term incarceration.

As a result jails are geared for a more transitory population by nature. Anyone who has ever had a court date knows that it can sometimes be months, occasionally even years, before the day in court comes around. That’s a long time, doubly so for children. This is especially true when the facility in question is designed for adults, an age segment with wildly different needs.

We will be keeping an eye on Polk County as this develops.

Category: Juvenile Justice, Prison Reform | Tags: , , ,
| October 10, 2011
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What’s Up in Texas? Juvenile Incarceration in 2011

Texas FlagLast week I reported the findings of the Annie E. Casey Foundation in regards to juvenile justice.  The report overwhelmingly supports rehabilitation over simple incarceration, a stance we have long held here at Humane Exposures.

One of the examples referred to in the report was the state of Texas, a state whose juvenile justice system  has been on a rapid turnaround since the sex scandals it suffered in 2007. Allan Turner, a reporter for the Houston Chronicle takes note of this change as it has surfaced in Austin:

Among the more promising reforms, said Ana Yanez-Correra, director of the Austin-based Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, is a juvenile diversion program begun in March 2009 by the Harris County District Attorney’s office.

In that program, first-time, nonviolent offenders are placed in informal probation for up to 180 days. During that period, said Terrance Windham, chief of the district attorney’s juvenile division, they are required to attend school, report to a probation officer, stay drug free and, in some cases, participate in programs addressing special needs.

This is exactly what needs to be done in order to reintegrate these youths into society. The attention to education and special needs in particular are positive steps forward. Of couse, as is the case with any program like this, the big question is “how effective is it?” Turner rings us the numbers further down in his column:

Upon successful completion of the program, cases are closed without charges being filed.

As of Aug. 31, 4,246 of 5,347 offenders completed the program successfully. Only 9 percent of those who completed the program returned with new offenses, Windham said.

That’s a marked reduction- almost 80% completed the program followed by an extraordinarily low rate of recidivism. I love being able to report numbers like this!

This is truly a bipartisan win- fiscal conservatives should love the reduced spending while the social justice angle is one that should appeal to the political left. In the meantime the really important part is that the community overall benefits both from reduced crime and the destruction of fewer lives due to incarceration.

Peter Maloff, a writer for the Public News Service in Texas

‘Comprehensive, well-thought-out strategies in state juvenile-justice systems that will not only ensure that there’s fewer kids locked up but that will ensure that there’s less crime, and less money spent, and that kids have better odds of being successful in adulthood.’

Texas agencies responsible for youth incarceration and parole will be abolished Dec. 1 and replaced by a new Department of Juvenile Justice to direct nonviolent offenders to local rehabilitation services. [Ana] Correa [executive director of the nonprofit Texas Criminal Justice Coalition] praises its mission but says it will only succeed if it is backed by ongoing state support.

‘You can have a system – and you can have all of the wonderful intentions in the system – but without the funding, it’s going to be extremely difficult to pull off. That’s something that we still have to be very diligent about as advocates.’

And this is why advocacy is so extremely important. If funding does not materialize even the reduced costs of this approach will prove too expensive.

Image Source: rcbodden on Flickr, used under it’s Creative Commons license.

Category: Juvenile Justice, Prison Reform, Texas | Tags: , , ,
| October 7, 2011
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The “Throw ‘Em in Jail,” Approach Doesn’t Work

Kilmainham JailRecidivism is a dirty word. Concretely it describes those who are imprisoned for a crime, serve time, and get out only to end up back behind bars. In the abstract it represents failure on a number of levels, not least of which is the failure of our current system to properly address and curtail criminal behavior.

Those familiar with my work here might recall that I examined this problem from a number of angles during my last tenure here. Once More, Rehabilitation Urged Over Incarceration, Recidivism May Be Worse Than We Think, and Education Based Incarceration in Southern California to name a few.  Those were written in mid to late 2010 so it’s time to take a look at what changes may have occurred over the past year.

One positive step forward comes to us in the form of a report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation:

The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s new report, No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration assembles a vast array of evidence to demonstrate that incarcerating kids doesn’t work: Youth prisons do not reduce future offending, they waste taxpayer dollars, and they frequently expose youth to dangerous and abusive conditions. The report also shows that many states have substantially reduced their juvenile correctional facility populations in recent years, and it finds that these states have seen no resulting increase in juvenile crime or violence. Finally, the report highlights successful reform efforts from several states and provides recommendations for how states can reduce juvenile incarceration rates and redesign their juvenile correction systems to better serve young people and the public.

As I had predicted then,  the accumulation of evidence causes the conclusion to become clearer and clearer: simple incarceration simply does not work. Brian Zumhagen writes on the WNYC News Blog that the empirical evidence from New York supports these findings:

Over the past decade, New York City has reduced the number of kids it sends to upstate facilities by more than 60 percent, according to New York City’s Probation Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi.

At the same time, he says, the number of serious felony arrests for city juveniles has declined by more than 25 percent.

Rehabilitation, not incarceration, is the key.

In my next blog post I’l be taking a look at the current situation in Texas, where they stopped locking up juvenile offenders for non-felony crimes back in 2007.

Image by amanderson2 on Flickr, used under it’s Creative Commons license

Category: Humane Exposures, Juvenile Justice, Prison Reform | Tags: , , ,
| November 7, 2010
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Inappropriate talk on daytime TV for teens, children and young adults.

HUMANE EXPOSURES explores the quality of daytime TV for young mothers with children at home, or for children and teens coming home from school and turning on TV as they have a break between school and homework. Or are all kids in afternoon sports?

The Doctors, CBS daytime one-hour show, had topics about “mental orgasm,” “vaginal discharge,” “swamp butt,” “anal sex,” “going gray down there,” and other embarrassing, personal, female issues that children and teenagers coming home from school, grabbing a snack and turning on the tube, do not need to see, hear about, become aware of, or add to other inappropriate viewing on daytime TV.  Is this valued information for young mothers to view? Is this what we want young mothers and their mothers to talk about as critical issues of today? This show airs in San Diego from 4:00-5:00 p.m. opposite Oprah.

HUMANE EXPOSURES is interested in your thoughts.

Category: Born, Education, Health, Humane Exposures, Juvenile Justice, Parenting, Public School, Women's Issues | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| October 26, 2010
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Alabama Inmates Tell Kids to Stay in School in a Documentary

SchoolIt is no secret that there is a link between education and one’s eventual path in life. Nowhere is this more painfully asserted than by the number of dropouts that end up in jail or prison. In Alabama, the officials have taken notice, and are using a short documentary film to communicate the “stay in school and out of prison” message to the students. Rick Harmon, a reporter for The Montgomery Advertiser, fills us in:

You wouldn’t expect drug dealers and killers to be in­vited into Alabama classrooms — especially not to teach. But they had a message that everyone from Gov. Bob Riley and Alabama Superintendent of Education Joe Morton to the inmates themselves believed Alabama students needed to hear.

The message was stay in school and out of prison. It was delivered by ‘lifers’ at Wetumpka’s Tutwiler Prison for Women and Atmore’s Holman Prison during a 52-minute video called ‘Inside Out.’ The video, created by the nonprof­it Mattie C. Stewart Foundation, was shown at tri-county area high schools last year.

We have the highest percentage of the population behind bars in the U.S. than any other nation on the planet. A Northeastern University study had reported in 2009 that, on an average day, roughly one in 10 male high school drop­outs between the ages of 16 and 24 was incarcerated. With high school grads, that number is down to one out of 35, and it’s only one out of 500 among the college graduates. In 2002, the Harvard Civil Rights Project study found that 68 percent of prison inmates are high school dropouts.

These are disturbing numbers. Numbers that the documentary hopes to put a dent in. When delivering messages to kids, there is often a credibility gap that the people behind the film hope to overcome by having the actual inmates be the ones delivering it. Harmon writes,

‘I couldn’t get a good job with no education,’ one of the female inmates at Tutwiler says in the documentary. ‘That’s why I kept selling drugs. That’s why I ended up here.’

‘I wonder where I would be now if I had stayed in school and gotten the kind of education my parents had been en­couraging me to get?’ says a male inmate at Holman serving life without parole.

Obviously, we believe in the power of personal narrative, especially in situations like this one. It is easy for a child to view the possibility of future incarceration as an abstract. When it transmutes into a real person, the impact is magnified many times. As always, putting a human face on these issues is vital. These raw, basic stories of humanity have a better chance of striking home than sanctimonious pronouncements or dry factoids. Especially when we’re talking to children.

We will be returning to this topic with our next book, Born Not Raised: Kids at Risk, which explores the troubled psyches of youngsters serving time in juvenile hall. The book showcases a variety of creative tasks taken on by the young detainees — writing projects, artwork, elicited responses to photographs. The revealing results underscore the Humane Exposures’ conviction that early education and youth development are the most effective strategies for breaking the cycle of at-risk behavior and helping our youth thrive. Look for the announcements about the publication date soon!

Source: “THE DROPOUT PROBLEM: Many leave schools for life in lockup,” The Montgomery Advertiser, 10/24/10
Image by dave_mcmt, used under its Creative Commons license.
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Category: Criminal Justice, Education, Humane Exposures, Juvenile Justice, Prison, Prison Reform | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| October 15, 2010
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Humane Exposures: The Beginning

Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing Time

Someone looking at our books and our film for the first time might as well ask how we got started down this particular path.

The roots of Humane Exposures go back 15 years and begin with Susan Madden Lankford’s interactions with the homeless. Having managed a successful portrait studio for years, she has decided that she wanted to do more. Renting the Seaport Village Jail, she then began photographing the homeless and collecting their narratives. Since many of those had involved incarceration, it was only natural that Lankford’s next step be touring the seven main jails in the area.

That tour brought her to Las Colinas, the county’s only all-women jail. It was then that Lankford has realized that prison reform is urgently needed, and decided to share the inmate’s situation with a the public in hopes of spurring that reform.

Mark Arner, a reporter for The San Diego Union Tribune, reported on the resulting book, Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes (also on Facebook) back when it was released in 2008:

Thirteen years ago, an inmate at the county’s only all-female jail said something startling to San Diego photographer Susan Madden Lankford.

‘Hey Susan, I have something to tell you: I found maggots in my sweet potatoes last week,’ Lankford said the inmate told her.

While her subsequent tour of the jail’s kitchen facilities revealed only clean surfaces and safe food, that one comment stuck with Lankford and became the title of the book. Here is Arner’s brief description of the book from the same article:

The 284-page book describes how Lankford obtained Kolender’s permission for the project in the mid-1990s. Primarily in 1995 and 1996, she conducted interviews and took black-and-white photographs of inmates, guards and jail overseers.

The book features 326 of those images, as well as journal entries and letters from several inmates from 1997 to 1999, research on domestic violence and drug and alcohol abuse, and a section on white-collar crime.

Since then, we have released a book of Lankford’s homeless photography, downTownUSA: A Personal Journey with The Homeless, and have even branched out into the realm of video with our documentary, It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing. All of these projects relate to an interelated set of issues:

  • Incarceration is often a factor in homelessness.
  • Education and early home life have a huge influence on children and are negative early environments, often contributing to the future criminal activity.
  • Patterns of abuse and neglect cycle through generations.
  • If we shift our societal focus to actual rehabilitation into society, we can not only impact homelessness but also greatly reduce the state expenditures incurred. For example, if homeless people had access to health care, it would cut millions in emergency services costs accrued over the course of a year.

Later this year we will be releasing Born, Not Raised: Kids at Risk, in which we will explore the troubled psyches of youngsters serving time in juvenile hall. Without education and other humane assistance, many of these youth will be caught in the revolving door of institutionalization.

All of these projects relate to each other and, taken together, try to present, one aspect at a time, the complex and interrelated nature of the societal breakdowns they address.

So, tell us, how did you discover Humane Exposures, and when? We’d love to know!

Source: “A Portrait of Jail Life,” The San Diego Union Tribune, 09/23/08
Image copyright Susan Madden Lankford, from the book “Maggots in my Sweet Potates: Women Doing Time.” Used with permission.
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Category: California, Criminal Justice, downTown U.S.A., Homelessness, Humane Exposures, It's More Expensive to Do Nothing, Juvenile Justice, Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes, Photography, Prison, Prison Reform, Women's Issues | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| October 14, 2010
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Homelessness: Facebook Resources

HUMANE EXPOSURESHere at HUMANE EXPOSURES, we believe in the power of the Internet to inform and mobilize people. This is one of the reasons that this blog exists.

Since we have just launched our new Facebook pages, we thought this would be a good time to share some of the groups and organizations on Facebook that also champion the cause of those discarded by society.

So, here, in no particular order, is a list of Facebook pages that you may find informative. Please visit them. (And, if you like our work, we would really appreciate it if you “Like” our new pages and help them start off on the right foot.)

We’re going to list our own new pages first and move on from there:

  • Humane Exposures Publishing — The main Facebook Page for our company. Updates on new films and books as well as a variety of new  items and resources. The books of HUMANE EXPOSURES PUBLISHING take a penetrating look at society’s disenfranchised, questioning how long we can ignore the broken segments of our population, and at what cost. If you stop by, please tell us what kind of content you would like to see more of!
  • downTownUSA: A Personal Journey With the Homeless (book) — Author and photographer Susan Madden Lankford kept a journal during her daily encounters with the San Diego’s street people, observing how even the defeated, or seemingly so, share many of our hopes and dreams.
  • Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing Time (book) – Through thought-provoking photographs and interviews, the author explores the kaleidoscope of alienation, personal despair, and fragile hopes of women caught up in the state’s zeal for incarceration.
  • It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing (film) – Important documentary film questions how long society can ignore the broken segments of our population and advocates for public awareness, correcting the underlying social issues, and improving the essential parenting skills.

The following is a list of other resources. All descriptions are quoted directly:

  • Feeding Pets of the Homeless — Feeding Pets of the Homeless is a nonprofit volunteer organization that provides pet food and veterinarian care to the homeless and less fortunate in local communities across the United States and Canada. How? Our volunteers collection sites receive donated pet food and deliver it to food banks and/or soups kitchens which have agreed to distribute the food to the homeless and impoverished.
  • PATH (People Assisting The Homeless) — In 2004, PATH reached its 20th year of existence. From a small program operating out of a church basement, PATH has now become a large regional agency serving over 1,800 people each month. The agency has developed a model of integrated services that communities from all over the state, the nation, and even internationally have looked to for replication.
  • InvisiblePeople.tv — Dedicated to capturing real stories by real people bringing visibility to the issues of homelessness. Our goal: for homeless people to no longer remain invisible. The stories are told by real people in their own very real words. They’re raw, uncensored and unedited. CAUTION: Some content may be offensive. Our hope is that you’ll get mad enough to do something. (Note: We’ve covered the InvisiblePeople.tv in an earlier post.)
  • Let’s get 1,500,000 people to support the 1,500,000 homeless kids in the US — This page was started by a small group of people committed to raising awareness and providing solutions around a problem we feel is not being properly addressed. It began with a question: “How is it that the wealthiest country in the world has well over a million of its children living on the street, not knowing where they will sleep tonight?”
  • The National Coalition for The Homeless — A national network of people who are currently experiencing or who have experienced homelessness, activists and advocates, community-based and faith-based service providers, and others committed to a single mission. That mission, our common bond, is to end homelessness. We are committed to creating the systemic and attitudinal changes necessary to prevent and end homelessness. At the same time, we work to meet the immediate needs of people who are currently experiencing homelessness or who are at risk of doing so. We take as our first principle of practice that people who are currently experiencing homelessness or have formerly experienced homelessness must be actively involved in all of our work. Toward this end, the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) engages in public education, policy advocacy, and grassroots organizing. We focus our work in the following four areas: housing justice, economic justice, health care justice, and civil rights.
  • Real Change Homelessness Empowerment Project — Real Change exists to create opportunity and a voice for low-income people while taking action to end homelessness and poverty.
  • National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV) — A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization governed by a 17-member board of directors… is the resource and technical assistance center for a national network of community-based service providers and local, state and federal agencies that provide emergency and supportive housing, food, health services, job training and placement assistance, legal aid and case management support for hundreds of thousands of homeless veterans each year.
  • Breaking Night: My Journey From Homeless to Harvard (book) – In the vein of The Glass Castle, Breaking Night by Liz Murray is the stunning memoir of a young woman who at age 15 was living on the streets, and who eventually made it into Harvard.
  • Healthcare for The Homeless, Inc. — For 25 years, HCH has provided comprehensive health care, mental health services, case management, addiction treatment, and housing assistance for tens of thousands of Marylanders experiencing homelessness.
  • Horizons for Homeless Children — Horizons for Homeless Children strives to improve the lives of homeless children and their families by providing the nurturing, stimulation and opportunities for early education and play that all children need to learn and grow in a healthy way.

So there you have it, please let us know if you would like to see more roundups of this nature. If so, we could make it a regular feature.

Source: Facebook.
Image copyright Susan Madden Lankford, from the book “downTown USA: A Personal Journey with the Homeless.” Used with permission.

Visit Us on Facebook: Humane Exposures Publishing, downTownUSA, Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes, It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing.

Category: California, Criminal Justice, downTown U.S.A., Facebook, Homeless Veterans, Homelessness, Humane Exposures, It's More Expensive to Do Nothing, Juvenile Justice, Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes, Photography, Poverty, Prison, San Diego, Women's Issues | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| September 9, 2010
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“It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing” Screens at the Newburyport Film Fest

Newburyport Documentary Film FestivalThe Newburyport Documentary Film Festival, now in its third year, presents 20 films. Three judges will rate the films in a number of juried categories, and, in addition, an audience-adjudicated award will also be given.

This year, one of those films will be It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing from our very own Humane Exposures Films. The film is directed by the award-winning Alan Swyer, who is known for work ranging from The Buddy Holly Story to the recent documentaries such as Béisbol: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, which he has worked on with Andy Garcia.

It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing is executive-produced by Susan Madden Lankford, and is rooted in her work on downTown: USA and Maggots in my Sweet Potatoes. Here’s a sample of what the film has to offer: This is the trailer from the Humane Exposures Films YouTube Channel:

In his advance praise for It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing, Dr. Bruce Perry sums up the film with an almost Twitter-like brevity:

‘It makes long term economic sense to try and take care of these people in a humane way, and help them heal.’ — Bruce Perry, MD, Ph.D., Senior Fellow, Child Trauma Academy

Experts agree that the film’s portrayal of our criminal justice system points to the need for and to the effectiveness of rehabilitation-oriented approaches over simple incarceration, especially when the critical aspect of recidivism is taken into full account:

‘In examining the indisputably recidivistic nature inherent in the contemporary practice focusing on the institutionalization of criminal offenders and comparing it with the documented potential found in numerous remedial programs that return nonviolent past offenders to society as self-sufficient and productive citizens, the documentary film ‘It’s More Expensive to Do Nothing’ makes a compelling case that more than justifies its factual title.’ — John Dean, author and former White House counsel

You can see It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing, as well as a host of other important works in the documentary genre, on September 24 through 26 in the historic downtown Newburyport, MA. The two venues, The Screening Room and The Firehouse Center for the Arts, will be the site of the film screenings during the film fest.

If you find yourself in MA on those dates, come on down and check out the film! It’s More Expensive To Do Nothing will be screened on Sunday, September 26, at 2:00 PM at The Screening Room. If you don’t want to take a chance on missing it, you can purchase tickets in advance.

Source: “Films Selected This Year,” Newburyport Documentary Film Festival, 09/10
Logo of The Newburyport Documentary Film Festival is used under Fair Use: Reporting.
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Category: downTown U.S.A., Events, Homelessness, Humane Exposures, It's More Expensive to Do Nothing, Juvenile Justice, Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes, Photography, Prison, Prison Reform, Women's Issues | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| August 24, 2010
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“Cash for Kids” Scandal Fuels Changes in PA Juvenille Court System

My trusty gavelPennsylvania has had its woes when it comes to its juvenile justice system. One of the worst and highest profile problems it has suffered was the much publicized “Cash for Kids” scandal. Here is a condensed rundown via Wikipedia, in case you missed it on the news:

[Judge Mark] Ciavarella pled guilty on February 13, 2009, pursuant to a plea agreement, to federal charges of honest services fraud, wire fraud and tax evasion in connection with receiving $2.6 million in kickbacks from Robert Powell and Robert Mericle, the co-owner and builder respectively, of two private, for-profit juvenile facilities. More specifically, the crimes charged were: conspiracy to deprive the public of the ‘intangible right of honest services,’ or corruption, and conspiracy to defraud the United States by failing to report income to the Internal Revenue Service. Ciavarella tendered his resignation to Governor Ed Rendell on January 23, 2009, prior to official publication of the charges.

What we would like to look at today is the repercussions of the scandal. In the aftermath of this hijacking of the justice system, the state of Pennsylvania is scrutinizing its handling of juvenile cases. The 10-year run of harsh sentences and unconstitutional rulings has inspired the formation of a task force composed of state advocates and county officials. Its aim? To overhaul the PA juvenile court system.

Michael Sisak, a staff writer for The Standard Speaker, has penned a nice article about the latest efforts. He writes:

Juveniles no longer appear in court without an attorney. Prosecutors, not court employees in the juvenile probation office, determine criminal charges. And infractions on school campuses are no longer painted with the same broad brush of ‘zero tolerance’ that guaranteed placement at a juvenile detention facility for even the most minor offenses.

‘Every case is going to be looked at individually, and those cases that do come through the system are going to be treated on an individual basis,’ District Attorney Jackie Musto Carroll said Wednesday, after a two-hour meeting with the task force at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre.

Sisak’s article is well worth the read, as he examines the steps being taken in detail. Importantly, he looks at both the pros and the cons to provide a balanced picture of the state of affairs. Among other things, he notes the slightly frosty reception of the local school administrators on the subject of ending “zero tolerance.” Their stated position in a meeting with the members of the Juvenile Justice Victim Response Task Force was that the change in policy engender a perception of weakness in their response to school violence.

What do you think? Can Pennsylvania pick up the pieces of its juvenile justice system? Is it on the right track in the approach it is taking to doing so? Let us know, we love comments!

Source: “Juvenile system changes take hold,” StandardSpeaker.com, 08/18/10
Image by steakpinball, used under its Creative Commons license.
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Category: Humane Exposures, Juvenile Justice, Prison, Prison Reform | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
| August 19, 2010
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America’s Prison Plight

Maggots in my Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing TimeIt is no secret that the American prison system is rife with problems. It is the personal stories of women in our penal system that led our own Susan Madden Lankford to create Maggots in my Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing Time, in which she juxtaposes black-and-white images taken in jails with quotes and personal narratives from the incarcerated.

This window into the incarcerated life, its hardships, and its social ramifications, is especially important in the modern day, a day when our penal system is bursting at the seams. David C. Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project in Washington, D.C., attributes this to the “Three Strikes” laws and other mandatory minimum-sentencing laws. He asserts that the overly harsh sentencing is responsible for not only causing the prison population to skyrocket, but is also culpable for the fact that approximately one in 11 of the imprisoned are there for life.

There are many aspects to this breakdown. Craig Welkener of AOL News brings us some of the disturbing facts in his recent opinion piece on the subject. Take particular note of the last two items, which directly affect imprisoned females:

The problems with today’s prisons are well documented. Conditions are deplorable. Here are a few facts:

  • Federal prisons are being operated at 160 percent capacity. Mandatory minimum sentences are putting thousands of nonviolent offenders in prison, for disproportionately long terms.
  • Approximately two-thirds of prisoners released each year will be back behind bars in some form before three years have passed.
  • Mental health care is woefully inadequate.
  • Prison rape is a moral outrage rampant across America. More than 60,500 inmates reported sexual abuse in 2007 (the actual number of rapes is likely far higher), and nearly 1 out of every 8 juveniles in custody became a victim of sexual assault from 2008 to 2009, according to a Department of Justice study.
  • Most states still allow the shackling of women during labor and delivery, often causing permanent scars. This unnecessary and humiliating procedure is opposed by the American Medical Association, the Rebecca Project for Human Rights and virtually anyone else who knows about it.

In short, the system is not working.

Those last two items in particular seem like something from the Middle Ages, yet they are faced daily in modern America. All of the factors listed by Welkener contribute to the additional trouble that former inmates have in reintegrating themselves back into society.

Take a look inside these walls, a bracing look at fellow humans fighting circumstances that dehumanize: Take a look at Maggots in my Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing Time. Unfiltered and presented in the words of the jailers and the imprisoned, it will take you into the chiaroscuro world of the female inmate, a world never seen before in quite this way.

Source: “Opinion: Why Obama Should Take on Prison Reform,” AOL News, 08/17/10
Image copyright Susan Madden Lankford, from the book “Maggots in my Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing Time.” Used with permission.
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