The traps of early release

Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 12:36 Written by admin Tuesday, 3 March 2009 08:08

As California faces an order to reduce its prison population by more than 55,000, an expert talks about what the state should do before opening the cell doors.

February 22, 2009

Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges issued a tentative ruling that California must reduce its state prison population by more than 55,000 to relieve intense overcrowding and poor medical and mental health care.
If the order holds, the state will have to figure out how to release prisoners on a scale never before seen.Joan Petersilia, professor of criminology, law and society at UC Irvine and the author of "When Prisoners Come Home," spoke about the ruling and its potential effects with Opinion page contributor Sara Catania. What follows is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Is there a precedent for an early release of this magnitude?
Never on the scale we’re talking about here. The most dramatic example occurred in Illinois in the 1980s, when the state released 1,200 people early.
Did crime increase as a result?

No, but there are crucial differences in the circumstances of the Illinois release and the proposed California release. In Illinois, the total number of prisoners released was a fraction of what we’re looking at for California. The Illinois numbers were low enough that if all the released prisoners were rearrested, it probably wouldn’t affect the state’s overall reported crime rate. Illinois also had some ability to limit releases to lower-level offenders.
Do you think early release can work in California?
I’m in favor of early release at a lesser level. I think we could safely release 15,000 to 18,000 prisoners. That would include very low-level technical parole violators, the elderly and low-level drug offenders. Nearly everyone who has studied this issue recommends removing less serious parole violators from state prisons.
How does the poor economy affect early release?
In two primary ways. First of all, whether you are conservative or liberal, everyone agrees that we don’t want to be spending $46,000 a year to house a prisoner who represents no public safety risk when it takes about $12,000 a year to fund a really good community-based program for that person.
Unfortunately, the services these former prisoners would need revolve primarily around substance-abuse treatment, and those are exactly the programs that are being cut. Limited early release is a good idea, but it could not be happening at a worse time. Just opening up prison doors and releasing 55,000 prisoners with no preparation is harsh to the offender and dangerous to the public.
Is there an early release approach that might mitigate the fallout?
Yes. In 1994, California’s Legislature created the Community-Based Punishment Act. It was never funded, but now people are talking about reactivating it. Under the act, if you’ve got prison-bound parole violators and you’re willing to keep them locally rather than sending them to state prison, you get a kickback from the state to pay for programs to ease their reentry into society. This approach could include short-term incarceration, intensive supervision, house arrest with electronic monitoring, enrollment in a work-release program, day reporting and mandatory substance-abuse treatment.
In our prisons, the overcrowding crisis is caused by parole violators returning to prison. Every year, we send some 70,000 parolees back to prison, about 30,000 of those from L.A. County alone. Most serve two to three months. Everybody knows this revolving door does not protect the public and in fact puts it at greater risk. These are the lower-level people who may have been in drug treatment, may have found a job and housing. When you send them back to prison, you break those connections and destabilize them. A few months later, they’re back on the street and expected to start all over again.
You recommend a far more limited early release than the one being proposed. Is it possible to do the release right with four times as many prisoners than you recommend?
No, not with the way California currently operates its prison and parole system. If we start releasing prisoners in such high numbers, those who are released are bound to include prisoners with lengthy criminal histories and violence in their backgrounds.
The best way we can reduce the risk these more serious prisoners represent is to transfer them from prison to intensive residential reentry facilities, or perhaps to electronic monitoring and house arrest. Once there, parole agents and community providers would need to closely monitor the prisoners’ behavior and try to interest them in rehabilitation and work training. Simply releasing this larger group of prisoners without the necessary housing and services is asking for more crime.
Is anyone talking about how to pay for the community approach, or are already overworked probation and parole officers just going to have bigger caseloads?
There is a lot of discussion going on in Sacramento about how to fund "intermediate sanctions" to be used instead of sending someone back to prison. If a prisoner who violates parole, for example, no longer returns to prison but remains in the community, who is responsible for his surveillance and services? We can’t ignore their parole failures because often those failures are a signal that the parolee is slipping. Other states have used intermediate sanctions, such as those described in the Community-Based Punishment Act. But in order to employ this model, we have to provide money to counties to expand these types of intermediate sanctions. If we can transfer the state prisoner to a community-based program, we save money — and perhaps more important, provide services that might actually help the prisoner stay out of crime in the long run — which, of course, saves even more money.
Even if early release went according to the best possible plan, there will still be the same number of cells and the same level of administration. Will there really be much in the way of savings inside prisons?
No, we won’t see any cost savings immediately. If prisoners are released, the remaining prisoners will simply spread out so as to not be as crowded, thereby satisfying the court’s requirements.
Of the $46,000 we spend a year to house a prisoner in California, $2,500 goes to food and clothing, $9,000 goes to healthcare and $2,000 goes toward education and employment training to prepare the inmate for release. That’s a total of $13,500 per prisoner. More than two-thirds of the cost of housing an inmate in California goes toward security and operations, making the overall cost of housing a prisoner in California the highest in the nation. There are no plans to close prisons any time soon, so the cost of running the prison system will remain rather unchanged for quite some time.
If the early release order is enacted on the scale proposed, there is a risk of a high level of recidivism, which carries a hefty price tag. In the end, will any money be saved?
The key to all of this — the real money — is in the California prisons, to the tune of $10 billion a year. If we’re to solve the state’s prison crisis, we’ve got to figure out how to shift some of that away from state prisons and into local programs. If we don’t, we’re setting the system up for failure.
Without sufficient financial support, we’re going to release these people and they’re going to fail. You’ll wind up with another victim, plus the cost of the prisoner’s reincarceration. If we don’t do this right, all of these people will be back in prison. We will have saved in the short term, but the long-term consequences will be huge.

- via LA Times

Thunder Valley Casino employee helps solve California bank robberies

Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 12:37 Written by admin Tuesday, 3 March 2009 08:06

On February 12, Roseville Crime Stoppers presented a $500 reward to a Thunder Valley Casino employee who helped law enforcement identify the "Stuffed Shirt Bandit."  The robber, nicknamed because of his habit of stuffing bank robbery loot into his shirt, was convicted of the June 11, 2008 robbery of River City Bank in Roseville, the June 23, 2008 robbery of Wells Fargo Bank in Lincoln, and five other northern California bank robberies.

Soon after the robbery in Lincoln, an off-duty Thunder Valley Casino employee saw surveillance footage of the suspect in the news media, and recognized the suspect as a recent visitor to the casino. The casino employee drove to work on his day off, and located surveillance video of the suspect and his vehicle, which helped identify the suspect.  Thunder Valley Casino officials provided the information to law enforcement, and Roseville Police investigators located the suspect  at a Roseville hotel. On June 26, Roseville Police investigators conducted surveillance on the hotel and arrested the suspect, Scott Stewart Singewald, 42, of Roseville, without incident.

According to a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release, on September 5, Singewald pleaded guilty before United States District Court Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. to seven counts of bank robbery.  A U.S. Attorney’s Office representative said that on January 9, Singewald was sentenced to 97 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $34,237 in restitution.

Roseville Police Chief Mike Blair said, "This case was a great example of the partnership among  local and federal law enforcement agencies, Roseville Crime Stoppers, and the community.  We are indebted to Thunder Valley Casino for their outstanding cooperation in this case, to their employee who went beyond the call of duty to help identify a criminal, and to Roseville Crime Stoppers for providing the reward." 

The casino employee’s tip lead to Singewald’s arrest and conviction on the following bank robberies:

September 1, 2007, Bank of America, 2400 N. Texas St., Fairfield
May 3, 2008, Bank of the West, 186 Main St., Woodland
May 16, 2008, Central Valley Community Bank, 1919 Howard Rd., Madera
May 24, 2008, Washington Mutual Bank, 2866 W. March Ln., Stockton
June 11, 2008, River City Bank, 3992 Douglas Blvd., Roseville
June 20, 2008, Bank of the West, 3509 El Camino Ave., Carmichael
June 23, 2008, Wells Fargo Bank, 945 Highway 65, Lincoln

The arrest resulted from the casino employee’s tip and a joint investigation by the Roseville and Lincoln Police Departments, and the Sacramento Violent Crimes Task Force, comprised of investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department.

Per Roseville Crime Stopper’s policy, the tipster remains anonymous. Anyone wanting to provide information about a Roseville-area crime may call Roseville Crime Stoppers at (91…. Roseville Crime Stoppers pays cash rewards for anonymous tips about crimes in Roseville leading to arrest.

– via Rocklin and Roseville Today

US raids target Mexican drug gang

Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 12:37 Written by admin Tuesday, 3 March 2009 08:05

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US Attorney General Eric Holder on the arrests of drug cartel suspects

A major crackdown on Mexican drug traffuckers operating in the US has led to the arrest of 755 people, Attorney General Eric Holder has announced.

These included 52 people detained on Wednesday in California, Minnesota and Maryland in raids targeting the powerful Sinaloa cartel.

The 21-month operation involved US, Mexican and Canadian authorities.

A 2008 justice department report found Mexican traffuckers were the biggest organised crime threat to the US.

Operation Xcellerator was carried out across the US

Most of the cocaine available in the US is smuggled via the US-Mexican border, while Mexican drug traffuckers control most of the US drug market.

Announcing the arrests, Mr Holder described the cartels as a threat to US national security.

"They are lucrative. They are violent. And they are operated with stunning planning and precision, " he said.

As well as 755 arrests, Operation Xcellerator led to the seizure of :

• money totalling $59.1m (£41.5m)
• 23 tonnes of narcotics, including 12,000 kg cocaine, 7,257 kg of marijuana, 544 kg of methamphetamines and 1.3m Ecstasy pills
• 149 vehicles, three aircraft, 3 maritime vessels
• 169 weapons

"We successfully concluded the largest and hardest hitting operation to ever target the very violent and dangerously powerful Sinaloa drug cartel," said Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

"From Washington to Maine, we have disrupted this cartel’s domestic operations, arresting US cell heads and stripping them of $59m in cash."

She said the investigation had uncovered a "super meth lab that is so sophisticated that we’ve seen none like it anywhere" and drug factory machines able to produce 12,000 ecstasy tablets an hour.

Operation Xcellerator had also disrupted the gang’s operations in Canada, Ms Leonhart said.

US officials say that over the past two years the street price of cocaine has more than doubled and purity fallen.

Turf wars

The Sinaloa cartel is one of four main Mexican drug-traffucking gangs, the others being the Gulf cartel, the Tijuana cartel and the Juarez cartel.

Turf wars led to the deaths of some 6,000 people last year as the traffuckers fought each other and the authorities, and Mexican media say so far this year there have been around 1,000 drug-related murders.

Mexico has deployed some 40,000 troops to tackle the drug gangs

Mr Holder told reporters he was concerned that drug violence from Mexico could spill over to the US.

"The problems that Mexico faces are also problems that we face," he said.

Mr Holder said the Obama administration would push for reinstating a ban on assault weapons.

This has been a long-standing request of the Mexican government which says guns smuggled over the border constitute a major threat to Mexico’s security.

Echoing the growing concern about the drug-related violence in Mexico, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a congressional committee on Wednesday it had become one of her top priorities.

"Mexico right now has issues of violence that are of a different degree and level than we’ve ever seen before," she said.

The US Congress has authorised the spending of $1.6bn (£1.1bn) dollars to confront the threat of drug traffucking and organised crime from Mexico and Central America.

So far, $197m (£138m) has been released for military and law enforcement training and equipment in Mexico.

- via BBC