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UNVARNISHED TRUTH:
Q: My son heard a rumor in prison that the Governor has a bill on her desk from the 2008 leigislature which, if she signs, will allow all prisoners who are first-time offenders and over the age of 55 to be released from prison after serving only 50% of their imposed sentence. True of False?
A: False. No such bill exists and no such bill was introduced at the Arizona legislature. No such bill is being considered by the Governor. This is an absurd, but persistent, rumor.
Do you have a question about the restitution deductions which will be made from inmate spendable accounts beginning May 11, 2008? See our FAQ page for information. (updated April 28, 2008)
Sam Lewis, age 83, former ADOC Corrections Director dies on March 8, 2008: Sam Lewis was the Arizona prison director from 1985 to 1995. He was the longest-serving prison director in Arizona's history -- serving under four Governors. After his retirement from the ADOC in 1995, he became a partner with other former DOC employees who formed a company to promote private prisons in Arizona. He was married to his wife, Wynell, for 61 years. Lewis was good for the Department in terms of employee benefits and organization, but his legacy also includes the fact that while under his tenure as Director, the entire Juvenile Corrections Division was removed from his authority due to a court order because of too many instances of phycial and emotional abuse of juvenile offenders. The court found that the adult prison director simply could not fairly or professionally manage a corrections system which contained juvenile offenders. Adult prisoners will primarily recall Lewis as the Director who succeeded in closing inmate law libraries (Lewis v. Casey). To this day, prisoners have no access to current case law or legal precedents to argue their cases in courts of law. To his family and friends, we express sincere sympathy. We hope that he has gone on to his final reward.
UNITED STATES SENTENCING COMMISSION AND THE U.S. SUPREME COURT MAKE HISTORIC DECISIONS WHICH WILL AFFECT (ONLY) FEDERALLY-SENTENCED PRISONERS (AT PRESENT TIME)
On December 11, 2007, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which has jurisdiction of federal prisoners only (not state-sentenced prisoners) agreed to allow prisoners serving crack cocaine sentences to seek sentence reductions that went into effect on November 1 in the federal system. This retroactive application of the newly revised federal sentencing laws for crack cocaine will affect 19,500 federal prisoners, almost 2,520 of whom could be eligible for early release in the first year. Federal courts will administer the application of the retroactive guideline, which is not automatic. Courts may refuse to grant sentence reductions to individuals if they believe they could pose a public safety risk. This is where a good prison record (few or no disciplinary write-ups; good work record; positive programming, etc.) may come into play.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission has repeatedly advised Congress since 1995 that there is no rational, scientific basis for the 100-to-1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine sentences. The Commission has also identified the resulting disparity as the "single most important" factor in longer sentences for Blacks compared to all other racial groups.
On December 10, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that judges are allowed to consider the unfairness of the 100-to-1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine sentences and may impose a sentence below the crack cocaine guideline in cases where the guideline sentences is determined by the judge to be too severe. This will obviously affect all future sentences.
ARIZONA's sentencing code also make a distinction between sentences for crack and powder cocaine. This sentencing disparity has obviously affected Blacks as a racial group. In order for the sentencing scheme on this issue to change in Arizona, a bill would have to be introduced at the upcoming legislative session (to begin the second week of January 2008). In order to make any new or reduced sentences apply to those already sentenced, the law would have to be designated to be retroactive. In the past in Arizona, retroactive permission for sentencing reconsideration has not been a valid process because it has been made available through the clemency process, which involves a final decision by the Governor. In our view, this is far too political to work fairly or effectively. If such a proposal (to equalize sentences for crack and powder cocaine) passes in Arizona, and if the equalization is applied retroactively, we at Middle Ground would oppose any attempt to conduct this process via the clemency/Governor's office.
Please keep in mind that at least in some jurisdictions that have been watching what happens at the U.S. Supreme Court and at the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the proposals to "fix" the disparity have been directed toward matching all the sentences to the currently harsher ones for crack cocaine, rather than lowering or reducing sentences to match those currently available for powder cocaine. There is no question in our minds that Arizona's prosecutors will try for this approach.
At the present time, the above information does not apply to and will have NO EFFECT on anyone under the jurisdiction of the Arizona state courts.
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NEW MARICOPA COUNTY JAIL VISITATION HOURS GO INTO EFFECT
Visiting a loved one at the Maricopa County Jail has just become far less convenient thanks to a new policy adopted in early November 2007 by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Jail visitation takes place from 6:30 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. for prisoners' family members. Due to a court ruling which is under appeal by the Sheriff, lawyers and their agents (paralegals, mitigation specialists, etc.) are allowed to visit seven days/week until 8 p.m. each day. No legal challenge is possible for family members or other regulat visitors to the jail because there is no constitutional right to visitation. The purported reason for the policy change is due to the jail's budget concerns. There is no comment from the Jail about the length of time that this policy will be in force. We can think of dozens of ways the Sheriff could save taxpayer money without having to inflict such inconvenience on the public, but he is immune to paying attention to anything other than his own (inflated) ego.
JAILING NATION: HOW DID OUR PRISON SYSTEMM BECOME SUCH A NIGHTMARE?
How can you tell when a democrary is dead? When concentration camps spring up and everyone shivers in fear? Or is it when concentration camps spring up and no one shivers in fear because everyone knows the camps are not for "people like us" (in Woody Allen's marvelous phrase) but for others -- the troublemakers, the one you can just tell are guilty merely by the color of their skin, the shape of their nose, or their social class?
Questions like these are unavoidable in the face of America's homegrown gulag archipelago, a vast network of jails, prisons and "supermax" tombs for the living-dead that, without anyone quite noticing, has metastasized into the largest detention system in the advanced industrial world. The proportion of the U.S. population languishing in such facilities now stands at 737 per 100,000, the highest rate on earth and some five to twelve times that of Britain, France and other Western European countries or japan. With 5 percent of the world's population, the USA has close to a quarter of the world's prioners which, curiously enough, is the same as its annual contribution to global warming.
With 2.2 million people behind bars and another 5 million on probation, parole or some other type of criminal justice supervision, it has approximately 3.2 percent of the adult population in its claws, which is to say one person in every 32. For African-Americans, the numbers are even more astonishing. By the mid-1990's, 7 percent of black males were behind bars, while the rate of imprisonment for black males between the ages of 25 and 29 now stands at 1 in 8.
While conservatives have spent the past three or four decades bemoaning the growth of single-parent families, there is a very simple reason why some 1.5 million American children are fatherless or (less often) motherless: Their parents are locked up. Becausee they are confined for the most part in distant rural prisons, moreover, only about one child in five gets to visit them as often as once each month.
What's that you say? Who cares whether a bunch of "rapists, murderers, robbers and even terrorists and spies," as Rep. Sen. itch Mcconnell once characterized American's prison population, get to see their kids? In fact, surprisingly few denizens of the American gulag have been sent away for violent crimes. In 2002, just 19 percent of the felony sentences handed down at the state level were for violent offenses, and of those only about 5 percent were for murder. Nonviolent drug offenses involving trafficking or possession (the modern equivalent of rum-running or getting caught with a bottle of bathrub gin) accounted for 31 percent of the total, while purely economic crimes such as burglarly and fraud made up an additional 32 percent. If the incarceration rate continues to rise and violent crime continues to drop, we can expect the non-violent sector of the prison population to expand accordingly.
A normal society might lighten up in such circumstances. After all, if violence is under control, isn't it time to come up with a more humane way of dealing with a dwindling number of miscreants? But America is not a normal country and only grows more punitive.
It has also been extremely reluctant to face up to the cancer in its midst. Several of the leading Democratic presidential candidates, for example, have recently come out against the infamous 100-to-1 ratio that subjects someone possessing ten grams of crack to the same penalty as someone caught with a kilo of powdered cocaine. Sen. Joe Biden has actually introduced legislation to eliminate the disparity -- without, however, acknowledging his role as a leadind drug warrior back in the 1980's, when he sponsored the bill that set it in stone in the first place. At a recent forum at Howard University, Hillary Clinton promised to "deal" with the disparity as well, although it would have been nice if she had done so back in the 90's, during the first Clinton administration, when the prison population was soaring by some 50 percent.
Although he is not running for president this time around, Jesse Jackson recently castigated Democrats for their hesitancy in addressing "failed, wasteful and unfair drug policies" that have sent 'so many young African-Americans" to jail. Yet Jackson forgot to mention his own drug-war past when, as a leading hardliner, he specifically called for "stiffer prison sentences" for black drug users and 'wartime consequences" for smugglers. "Since the flow of drugs into the US is an act of terrorism, antiterrorist policies must be applied," he delcared in a 1989 interview, a textbook example of how the antidrug rhetoric of the late 20th century helped pave the way for the "global war on terror" of the early 21st (century).
In other words, cowardice and hypocrisy abound. Fortunately, a small number of academics and at least one journalist have begun training an eye on America's growing prison crisis. Since there is more than enough justice to go around, each has zeroed in on different aspects of the phenomenon -- on the political and economic consequences of stigmatizing so many young people for life, on the racial consequences of disproportionately punishing young black males and on the sheer moral horror of needlessly locking away real, live human beings in supermax prisns that are little more than high-tech dungeons. Their findings, to make a long story short, are that the damagee cannot be reduced to a simple matter of so many person-years of lost time. To the contrary, the effects promise to multiply for years to come.
In American Furies sasha Abramsky, a Sacramento-based journalist and longtime Nation contributor, convincingly argues that the best way to understand U.S. prison policies is to think of them as a GI Bill in reverse. Just as the original GI Bill liad the basis for a major social advance by making college available to millions of verterans, mass incarceration is laying the basis for enormous social regression by stigmatizing and brutalizing millions of young people and "deskilling" them by removing them from the workforce. American will feel the effects for generations.
Bruce Western, a Princeton sociologist, offers the best overview. He notes in his new study, Punishment and Inequality in American, that mass imprisonment is actually a novel development. For much of the 20th century, the US incarceration rate held steady at around 100 per 100,000, which would put it in the same ballpark as Western Europe today. But after a slight dip following the liberal reforms of the 1960's, the curve reversed direction in the mid-70's and then rose more steeply in the 80's and 90's. Considering that Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Austria succeeded in reducing or holding their incarceration rates steady during this period, the US pattern was highly exceptional. But so are US crime rates. Between 1980 and 1991, US homicides hovered at between 7.9 and 10.2 per 100,000, as much as ten times the European average. (The rate has since fallen to around 5.7 per 100,000). Combined with the crack wave that also exploded n the 1980's, the result was a deepening sense of panic that peaked in mid-1986 with the death of basketball star Len Bias from a cocaine overdose.
Although there was no evidence that crack had anything to do with Bias's death -- police found only powdered cocaine in his car -- the incident somehow confirmed crack as the new devil substance, "the most addictive drug known to man," in the words of Newsweek, and a threat comparable to the "medieval plagues," in the considered opinion of U.S. News and World Report (which would have meant that the country was facing an imminent population loss of up to 33 percent). Within a atter of months, Joe Biden had helped shepherd through to victory the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, an unusually horrendous piece of legislation that etched in stone the 100-to-1 penalty ratio for crack.
Still, it is always interesting to consider which deaths fill people with horror and which ones don't. the year before Bias's death not only saw 19,000 homicides in the US, but nearly 46,000 highway fatalities,, too. Yet Congress somehow refrained from criminalizing motor vehicles. Crack's status as the drug du jour of a certain class of inner-city blacks should have been the giveaway. What had Congress in a tizzy was not cocaine consumption so much as black cocaine consumption, which is why the subsequent repression was bound to be far harder on African-Americans than on whites. although there is no evidence that blacks use drugs more than whites and indeed some evidence that they use them less, Western notes that black users are now twice as likely to be arrested for drugs and, once arrested, more likely to go to prison or jail. None of this is necessarily racist, at least not in the crudely explicit way we associate with men in white sheets.
The reason the police concentrate their efforts in black inner-city neighborhoods, Western notes, is that users congregate there in large numbers, and buying, selling and using tend to take place in public. (It's harder to make arrests behind the closed doors of some suburban McMansion.) If a judge is more inclinced to send a poor black defendant to prison, similarly, it is not necessarily because he or she enjoys punishing someone with dark skin but because the judge, according to Western, may "see poor defendants as having fewer prospects and social supportss, thus as havng less potential for rehabilitation." If your weeping parents can afford to send you to private rehab, you're excused. If not, you're off to the state pen.
Racial and class biases are thus built into the very structure of the drug war. Western is particularly effective on the economic consequences of such grossly disproportionate policies. The standard account of American economic development since the 1970's, told and retold in countless undergraduate classrooms, is that economic deregulation and growth have done much to narrow the once-yawning wage gap between white and black workers. To quote the New York Times: "Unemployment rates among blacks and Hispanic people . . . are at or near record loaw. Joblessness among high school dropouts has fallen to about half the rate in 1992. And wages for the lowest paid are rising faster than inflation for the first time in decades.
A rising tide lifts all boats, whereas all that labor-market rigidity has done for "Old Europe" is to saddle it with persistently high levels of unemployment, an alienated underclass and riots in the banlieues. But as Punishment and Inequality in American points out, if US economic policies look good, it is only because the country's enormous prison population is not factored into the equation. If workers behind bars are counted, then it quickly becomes apparent "that young black men have experienced virtually no real economic gains on young whites" and that the real black unemployment rate is up to 20 percent greater than the official statistic indicate. Rather than freeing up the markets, Western writes, the US has "adopted policies that massively and coercively regulated the poor." Where the Danes provide their unemployed with up to 80 percent of their previous salary and the Germans provide them with 60 percent, American has deregulated the rich while throwing a growing portion of its working class in jail.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio Announces New "Security" Procedures for Inmate Incoming Mail
Joe Arpaio has announced that prisoners in his jail will only be able to receive mail that is written to them on a postcard. He claims that this is for security reasons, but it is an absurd infringement on the First Amemdment Rights of not just prisoners, but the people who write or correspond with them. He claims to be making exceptions for legal mail, but there is no way in which people from other states or counties can possibly be expected to know that their ability to correspond with a Maricipa County Jail inmate is limited to whatever the can fit on a 3 X 5" postcard.
As soon as the policy is implemented and we begin hearing from potential Plaintiffs we will begin to explore the possibility for legal challenge to this policy. However, in order to prevail in a lawsuit, the Plantiff would have to demonstrate harm from the postcard policy. News periodicals are not included in the postcard requirement, nor are magazines, newsletters from legitimate organizations, etc. Since the policy went into effect several months ago, Middle Ground has not heard from a single family member or prisoner of "actual' harm suffered as a result of this policy. The number of postcards that an inmate can receive is unlimited.
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Information updated: January 10, 2008
Do PRISON GUARD Truly Have Unsafe Jobs, As They Claim?
Not according to the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics (2004). In fact, one has to wonder why we don't see more action/adventure television shows starring persons working in the following TOP TEN MOST DANGEROUS JOBS:
Ranking by Dangerousness of Occupation
1. Logging workers
2. Aircraft pilots
3. Fishers and fishing workers
4. Structural iron and steel workers
5. Refuseand recyclable material collectors
6. Farmers and Ranchers
7. Roofers
8. Electrical power line installers/repairers
9. Drivers/sales workers and truck drivers
10. Taxi drivers and chauffeurs
No matter what agency compiles the statistics (with the exception of prison guard's unions), prison workers don't fall into any category with high mortality/injury rates. Prison guards are constantly spending time at the legislature attempting to drum up support for salary increases, often comparing their job qualifications, skills, and training to sworn police officers. They often speak about the dangers they encounter each day -- placing ther lives " on the line" for Arizona's citizenry. This is bunk, but many of our legislators will not take the time or make the effort to truly understand the difference between a sworn police officer and a prison guard, nor will legislators demand that the Department of Corrections provide verifiable proof of the number of incidents where guards are injured each year. They often "beg" media and others to refer to them as "correctional service officers," but most educated people can see that this is merely modern job-speak (a euphemism) for "prison guard". At Middle Ground, we would have no objection to referring to them as correctional officers if they did, in fact, engage in anything remotely connected to correction of human behavior. Interestingly, at the same time that prison guards are complaining that their wages don't compare to police officers and other authentic law enforcement personnel, the actual police officers, DPS officers, detention officers and others are lobbying legislators for salary increases, too. Hence, prison guard wages will always be lower than other law enforcement personnel. We wonder what excuse will they continue to use for the high turnover rates and shockingly low performance standards for staff within the state prison system? It is very, very difficult to get fired from a job as a prison guard. Instead, when found guilty of even serious misconduct or some other policy infraction, they are moved to a graveyard shift or to a position that does not involve contact with prisoners. (Note: If the media becomes involved, as it did in the William Harris case, some sacrificial heads may roll, but never at the highest administrative levels ("fall guys" will be located within the organization chart). What type of message does that send to taxpayers and to inmates who are in prison for behavior that was unacceptable within our society?
We don't oppose wages that are commensurate with the educational, performance and experience levels that are mandated for a particular position. We do oppose granting salary raises requested simply to try to pretend that one is acting in the same capacity as another, more difficult, occupation. We oppose salary increases when performance standards are kept secret, or not met or measured at all. We oppose the lack of public scrutiny which the Department is subjected to, including by the Governor's office. We believe the media should be ashamed of itself for the kid-gloves/anything-you-say-we'll-print-without-checking manner in which it treats the Department in most cases. Finally, we believe that short of a major revolution in leadership, job descriptions, attitudes, training, staff recruitment, accountability and oversight, the Department of Corrections in Arizona will continue to produce the same dismal results (no matter how craftily the Director attempts to manipulate her "success" statistics) for many years into the future -- all at the expense of taxpayers and future victims of crime.
Once again, the taxpayer loses.
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Prison Director Under Fire For Failing To Report Inmate Murder(s)
In a story published on Dec. 7, 2006 in the Tribune newspaper, entitled, "Prison slaying raises questions," DOC Director Dora Schriro comes under fire for not reporting an inmates death -- William Harris was stabbed and repeatedly choked on September 7, 2006. Harris' cellmate is the prime suspect (no surprise there), but at least two prison employees are also being questioned about their roles in the incident. (It is not uncommon in prison for guards to punish certain inmates by placing them in cells with dangerous individuals). In this case, Harris was killed within 24 hours of being placed in his new cell. His cellmate was a Level 5/5; Harris was a 3/5. The two should NEVER have been celled together.
When contacted by news reporter Dennis Welch of the Tribune, Schriro denied that she had been hiding the murder. She claims that she "either left a voice mail message or spoke directly" to Dennis Burke, an aide to Gov. Napolitano. But no one at Napolitano's office would confirm that the Governor's office had been contacted in September regarding this murder. Napolitano actually told a reporter that she was "not aware of the incident."
No criminal charges have been filed in Pinal County -- the place where the crime was committed. Harris's cellmate was serving a life without parole sentence for murder. Harris was serving a drug-related sentence of a much shorter term.
Middle Ground has contacted several legislators to propose legislation that would require the DOC to report all inmate deaths, if not of natural causes, within 24 hours, to the Governor, the State Senate President and to the Speaker of the House, at a minimum. In addition, we have called for legislation to require the Department to annually report specific details of each and every death which occurs to anyone while in the custody of the Department, including the cause of death and the disposition of incidents where an unnatural death occurred.
We are aware of several instances where a murder has occurred to an incarcerated person, but no one is charged with the murder.
The Department seems to place very little value on the lives and safety of its inmate population. If a murder or any harm at all occurs to staff members, it is reported to the media at once. Such information should also occur when inmates are killed or attacked as well. The same effort, speed and resources should be expended to investigate and bring to justice anyone who commits a crime against an inmate OR a staff member. Now, that's a "parallel universe."
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Second-time offenders will get prison time only: According to an article in The Arizona Republic, published November 29, 2006, Andrew Thomas, County Attorney for Maricopa County, has announced a policy beginning January 1, 2007 which states that second-time offenders will not be given a plea bargain offer unless it includes time in prison (no probation-eligible plea offers). The only exceptions will be for those charged SOLELY with possession of drugs and those facing Class 6 felonies that can be designated as misdemeanors.
According to the DOC, this will add about 2,600 additional prisoners to the system each year (beyond the current additions each year which average around 16,000) at an additional cost of about $57.4/year (in addition to the current operating budget in excess of $600 million). Currently, the Arizona Prison System has 35,726 inmates and is understaffed by 471 guards (even after recent pay raises which purportedly were supposed to entice many more "qualified" personnel to guard positions).
Our opinion: Don't look for much sympathy from legislators. Our take on this situation is that it will encourage them to purchase more out-of-state (and possibly in-state) private prison beds. The lobbyists for the private prison industry are no doubt licking their chops at this news. Andrew Thomas' suggestion: tent cities, which model Joe Arpaio's jail. He is apparently unaware of the security issues and other problems which exist when tents are used for long-term "housing."
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Here's an interesting bit of news from The Arizona Republic, November 6, 2006: (page B-12)
POLICE TAKE COCHISE FELON FROM JAIL TO CAST BALLOT -- (Bisbee) A man waiting to be sentenced in an assault case won a court order that allowed him to be brought from jail to an elections office to vote.** Earl Sprague, 66, received a police escort to the Cochise County office where he cast an early ballot on Friday, and then was brought back to the jail.
A day earlier, he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument.
First-time convicted felons can vote in Arizona only after they have completed their sentences, provided they weren't convicted of a firearms-related offense.***
Repeat felons must petition a judge to have their voting rights restored. Sprague will lose his right to vote after his sentencing in December.
His charges stem from an alleged drunken driving accident in Sierra Vista in October 2004. Ron Hager of the Cochise County Sheriff's Office said Friday was the first time in his 12 years associated with the jail that an inmate had been taken to vote.
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** He must have already been registered to vote at the time he requested a court order to exercise his right to vote.
*** This information is incorrect. Any person convicted of a first-time felony, no matter what the offense -- including a firearm offense -- has his/her civil rights (including the right to vote) automatically restored after final completion of the sentence. It must be a first-time felony, and can only be a conviction for one count, even under the same case number. However, the right to bear arms is not included in the automatic restoration. For anyone who wishes to have his right to bear arms restored after any felony conviction, he must petition the court and demonstrate to the satisfaction of the judge that he/she should have the right to bear arms. See A.R.S 13-906-912. Federal firearms possession statutes may conflict with state laws, so even if STATE courts have restored an ex-felon's right to possess a firearm, he may be in conflict with federal prohibited possessor laws.
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2.2 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE US WERE INCARCERATED BY JUNE 2005; 56,428 INMATES ADDED IN ONE YEAR
Prisons and jails added more than 1,000 inmates each week for a year, putting almost 2.2 million people, or ONE IN EVERY 136 U.S. residents, behind bars by last summer.
The total on June 30, 2005, was 56,428 more than at the same time in 2004, as reported by the government (The Bureau of Justice Statistics). It represents a weekly rise of 1,085 inmates.
Of particular note was the gain of 33,539 inmates in jails, the largest increased since 1997. That was a 4.7 percent growth rate, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in people held in state and federal prisons.
Prisons accounted for about 2/3 of all inmates, or 1.4 million, while the other third, nearly 750,000, were in local jails.
The increased in the number of people in the 3,365 local jails around the country is due partly to their (jails) changing role. Jails often hold inmates for state or federal systems, as well as people who have yet to begin serving a sentence. The Justice Department agency found that 67 % of people in jails have NOT BEEN CONVICTED, meaning that many of them are awaiting trial. The vast majority of people in jail pending trial are eligible for release on bond, but are too poor raise bail money.
Overall, 738 people in the USA were locked up for every 100,000 residents. This compares with 725 people locked up for every 100,000 residents in June 2004. The states with the highest rates of incarceration per capita were Louisiana and Georgia, with MORE THAN ONE PERCENT OF THEIR STATE POPULATIONS IN PRISON OR JAIL. Rounding out the top five were Texas, Mississippi and Oklahoma.
ARIZONA HAD 808 PEOPLE LOCKED UP (WELL ABOVE THE NATIONAL AVERAGE) FOR EVERY 100,000 RESIDENTS .
The states with the lowest per capita rates of incarceration were Maine, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire.
-- Information taken from The Arizona Republic, May 22, 2006
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For Status of Visitation At All Jails
Each of the jails in Maricopa County now has a recorded message providing updated information regarding visitation status at their facilities (e.g., if there is a lockdown in place which prevents visitation, etc.). Supposedly, the messages are updated on a daily basis, but we checked each number before posting them below and found that not all of them are up-to-date. However, we are posting this information to facilitate access to jail visitation as much as possible.
Towers Jail (602) 876-1679
Estrella Jail (602) 876-1222
Durango Jail (602) 876-3555
Fourth Avenue Jail (602) 876-9001
Lower Buckeye Jail (602) 876-6007
Tent City (602) 876-1735
Rumor Control for Maricopa County Jails: No, Joe Arpaio is not on probation himself. No, his wife and family don't have personal connections to the inmate commissaries. No, Joe Arpaio has not recently been arrested nor
Major
Changes in the current (Truth-in-sentencing) Criminal
Code ?
This
rumor rears its ugly head each and every year.
The 85% sentencing code (effective as of 1/1/94)
is still in effect. No new laws have been introduced,
much less passed into law, which reduce the 1994 criminal
sentencing code from the 85% law to a 65% law.
For crimes committed on or after January 1, 1994, the
defendant -- if sentenced to prison -- will serve approximately
85% of the imposed sentence before becoming eligible
for release. In addition, each person sentenced for a crime after 1/1/94 will be sentenced to serve approximately 15% of the imposed sentence on community supervision status after release from secure confinement. There is no possibility, by the way, that the Legislature or the Governor would sign into law a bill that would restore parole eligibility or even commutation eligibility for those convicted of violent crimes who are currently ineligible. Public sentiment is clearly against such action and legislators pay a great deal of attention to the direction in which the wind is blowing.
Prisoners
who've paid room and board while in prison (while working
for an ACI job, etc.) are entitled to have their money
returned to them upon release?
No, this isn't true. State law allows prisoners
who work at jobs contracted with private businesses
to be charged for room, board, restitution, fines, child
support, or any other applicable costs, etc. No
refund is due to anyone who pays such fees while in
prison. This rumor seems to have been circulating
among women prisoners, and it simply is not true.
The
BLUM decision, which requires the DOC to store property
until the release of a prisoner has been overturned
by the courts, along with the controlling statute ARS
31-228 (A)? No, if an item
of value is taken from a prisoner while he/she is incarcerated
(as long as the item is not contraband), then the Department
is required to store the item until the release of the
prisoner. The prisoner cannot be forced to mail
the property to someone on his/her visitation list,
and the state is not permitted to confiscate the property.
However, a person may not have an item in storage (a
grand fathered TV, for example) AND have one that he/she
purchased from the Inmate Store. In such
a case, the stored TV would "count" against
the prisoner's allowable limit on TV's, which is --
one. The BLUM decision still stands a Black Letter
law on inmate personal property storage in Arizona's
prisons (Middle Ground won this lawsuit on appeal many
years ago), and ARS 31-228 (A) still controls the storage
of inmate property that is not permitted to be in the
inmates' immediate possession.
Click here
for news articles or advocacy letters of interest:
Middle Ground advocates for prisoners whose punishment was withholding food for eight days
Federal
Judge In Missouri Calls Arizona DOC Director Dora Schriro
a Liar
How
Did They Actually Do It?
Letter
to Key Legislators Urging Independent Investigation
of Hostage Scandal
Donna
Hamm's Letter to the Editor/Arizona Republic 2/5/04hoenix
New Times 2/6/04 Article About
"Whitewash" Investigation of Hostage Scandal
Elderly/Aged
Inmates Are Real Burden To Prison System
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