NEWSPRISON REFORM

Patricia Spottedcrow, the 26 year-old mother of four who was convicted of selling $31 of marijuana to a police informant, has had her 12 year prison sentence reduced to eight years with four years of probation.

While the reduction in her sentence shows understanding, it is not justice and does not go far enough. As Spottedcrow's attorney, Josh Welch puts it, she shouldn't be in jail at all:

"Nobody understands why this woman is serving this long of a sentence for this type of crime. Look at other states; you can commit this same crime and it's not illegal. That's insane. She sold $30 of marijuana for gas money and food money for her family. It's stupid. It's wrong. But you don't go to prison for eight or 12 years for that. You shouldn't go to prison period."

Blanca Gonzalez's son spent years at California's Kern Valley State Prison, where she says he was sickened by the foul water he was forced to drink – water that the state knows is contaminated with arsenic, a carcinogen that can cause serious skin damage and circulatory system problems. And she wanted to do something about it.

But where to start? For years California officials have been promising to fix the facility's water problem – promising to provide its more than 5,000 inhabitants water that meets the standards of the EPA and World Health Organization. And for years they have failed to deliver, extending and then extending again their self-imposed deadlines for when they “anticipate” resolving the issue; indeed, just this year the supposed deadline for installing water treatment equipment has been extended from October 2011 to February 2012 – and then again to August 2012.

After reading an article last fall about Kern Valley State Prison's dirty water, Gonzalez contacted your humble criminal justice editor here at Change.org, asking that I write more about the problem. And for weeks … well, I didn't – hey, I'm a busy guy, alright? But after a few more friendly reminders, her persistence paid off. And now her campaign is drawing the attention of California's top prison officials.

California officials first learned that the water at Kern Valley State Prison was contaminated with arsenic – twice the level considered safe by the World Health Organization – soon after the facility opened in 2005. Now one of the top prison officials in the state tells Change.org the problem will be fixed.

The problem with that, though? We've heard it before.

In December 2008, the prison's warden at the time, Anthony Hedgpeth, issued a memo pledging action to fix the contaminated water problem. “We anticipate resolving the problem by June 2009,” the memo stated, noting that exposure to arsenic can cause skin damage and circulatory system problems, as well as increase the risk one will develop cancer. Indeed, according to the EPA, long-term arsenic exposure can cause “cancer of the bladder, lungs, skin, kidneys, nasal passages, liver and prostate.”

Arsenic contamination is a particular population when dealing with a captive population – like the more than 5,000 men incarcerated at Kern Valley State Prison – that can't switch to bottled water or other alternative sources of water.

But despite the pledge to address the issue ... nothing happened.

For more than five years, prisoners at Kern Valley State Prison have been forced to drink water that the state of California knows is laced with arsenic, a known carcinogen. And for more than five years, officials have chosen not to do anything about it.

They have, however, talked about how they “anticipate” doing something about it.

In an April 2008 memo to incarcerated men and employees at the facility, located in Delano, California, then-warden Anthony Hedgpeth noting that the prison's drinking water contained roughly twice the level of arsenic permitted by the EPA. “This is not an emergency,” the memo stated, even as it proceeded to note that drinking the water over an extended period – like, say, a prisoner with no other options – may cause “skin damage or circulatory system problems,” in addition to causing cancer.

Watching HBO might make you think the city of Baltimore is a war zone -- a seedy den of crime and corruption. And no doubt, there's a good deal of both. But the truth is that the city's violent crime rate, like the nation's as a whole, has been falling for years, dropping 10 percent since 2006.

And now what is always the most lagging indicator – elected officials – appear to have recognized that positive trend, with the recent 2012 budget proposal unveiled last month by Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley dropping funding for a proposed $181 million women's jail in Baltimore that critics noted would primarily have been used to house nonviolent offenders and those who simply couldn't afford to post bail, i.e. people who shouldn't be behind bars in the first place.

As noted in a report from the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) released last month that Matt Kelley reported on here at Change.org, the proposed facility – the supposed need for which was based on outdated projections of a rise in crime – would have more than doubled Baltimore's capacity to incarcerate women. And as anyone familiar with the prison system in the U.S. can attest, if you build it, politicians and law enforcement will find a way to fill it.

In an argument that’s been going back and forth for years now, one side in New Orleans fought for a smaller prison, something that would have the potential to change the city’s notoriety as a hub of incarceration. The other side, mainly led by the local sheriff, Marlin Gusman, held onto the jail-culture, requesting sometimes a larger prison and other times, to keep the old one open.

The argument was finally resolved last week when the New Orleans City Council voted to approve a new facility, one that’s only a fraction of the size of the crumbling leviathan that it's to replace.

At one point in recent history, Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) used to hold inmates at both the local and state level, contained one bed for every 65 Orleans’ residents. The current institution has 3,500 beds and has served to make the city not just the most incarcerated in the United States, but the entire world.

The water at Kern Valley State Prison contains twice the federally accepted level of arsenic, a known carcinogen. But the 5,000 men imprisoned at the “state-of-the-art” Central California facility have no choice: they have to drink it.

And it's not as if prison officials just learned about the issue last week. In fact, tests on the water discovered the problem soon after the prison opened in 2005. The powers that be have just chosen to do nothing about it.

Not that there haven’t been promises. In a 2008 memo informing both incarcererated men and prison employees of the problem, then-warden Anthony Hedgpeth said that “[w]e anticipate resolving the problem by June 2009.” Notice that ambiguous phrasing --“anticipate resolving” -- instead of a simple declarative sentence like, say, “we will resolve the problem.”

Tellingly, the same memo declares: “This is not an emergency,” never mind the fact that arsenic is known to damage the circulatory system and to cause “cancer of the bladder, lungs, skin, kidneys, nasal passages, liver and prostate,” according to the EPA. And promises aside, nothing has been done to address the problem of the prison poisoning its prisoners. In the meantime, prison officials have pressed for a massive expansion of Kern Valley State Prison, at an annual cost to taxpayers of $86 million.

Priorities.

Three months after taking office, President Obama took part in a town hall-style meeting where he answered questions voted on by Americans – about 3 ½ million of them, to be exact.

But when the top vote-getter turned out to be a question about legalizing marijuana, the president's response wasn't as respectful and dignified as a whole lot of people had hoped it would be, consisting of a hefty dose of condescension spliced with laughter, which is all too typical of politicians confronted with the opinions of the unwashed masses they claim to represent.

“[T]here was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy,” Obama said, chuckling. “I don't know what this says about the online audience … The answer is, no.”

And I don't know what it says about our elected officials that they are so dismissive of maybe, just possibly, pursuing a different strategy than the tried-and-failed one of the last few decades of spending billions of dollars incarcerating evermore Americans for non-violent drug offenses; in 2009, more than 858,000 people were arrested for marijuana violations alone. Well, actually, I do know what that says about our politicians, but the words that come to mind aren't printable.

Later this week, Americans will again get a chance to ask President Obama why he's so committed to a marijuana policy – and a war on drugs – that is so costly in terms of lives and taxpayer money, but has achieved little more than the largest prison population in world history.

The painful budget cuts on the horizon in California could have an upside for criminal justice reformers.

When new California Governor Jerry Brown announced $12.5 billion in proposed state funding cuts last week, he included a call to close the state's juvenile prison system by 2014. Community based alternatives to incarceration have been shown to reduce crime and long-term recidivism (in Missouri, for example), and Brown's proposal would move California in that direction. This is progressive leadership, and Brown deserves congratulations for raising the dialogue on juvenile justice alternatives.

But the deal is far from done. The state legislature holds the keys to the budget, and the Ella Baker Center launched a petition on Change.org calling on state lawmakers to keep this critical cut in the final budget. The Baker Center has advocated for this reform for seven years, and wisely points out in this blog post that Brown's announcement "is not merely a victory of activists and politicians. The real champions are the mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles that would not give up on their children or our state."

Brown's proposed budget, however, does not mess with another costly, wasteful pillar of the state's justice system: the death penalty. The ACLU of Northern California is calling on Brown to raise the abolition of the death penalty to his budget plans, potentially saving taxpayers more than $125 million per year (plus $400 million on a ridiculous proposed new death row). Sign the ACLU's petition here.

Those of you who've read the posts in my Beyond Incarceration series know that I'm a huge advocate for prison arts initiatives. Art has the power to change lives -- not just of those who are incarcerated, but of those entering prisons from the outside to share their passion for creative expression.

I've experienced this myself, having facilitated a creative writing group in a county jail, and I hope that my stories will inspire readers to get involved, either through volunteering their time with a prison arts organization or by speaking out to ensure that prison arts and education programs get the funding they need to survive. The book I review here is a testament to just how valuable these programs are -- to prisoners and to us all.

Judith Tannenbaum and Spoon Jackson come from vastly different backgrounds, and their day-to-day lives share few commonalities. They are an unlikely duo, it seems - folks who wouldn’t typically cross paths. But Spoon and Judith are connected by something that will forever keep them bound: the shared experience of a space that allowed them to be fully human and completely real. And they found this space in the most unlikely of places: San Quentin.

Spoon and Judith first met 25 years ago, when Judith, a shy and at times anxious Jewish woman, was asked to facilitate a poetry class in the prison through California’s now-defunct Arts-in-Corrections program. Spoon, a quiet, solitary African American man who had only recently learned to read beyond a sixth grade level, was one of her students. In By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives, Judith and Spoon weave a heartfelt story of art, friendship, meaning, and hope. Their memoir is not only a beautiful story of human possibility, but also a candid first-hand account of the shortcomings of both our criminal justice and education systems.