Add accountability to rehab, reentry arguments for inmates' access to email

Grits has long believed that there's little big-picture risk and much benefit from the federal system of allowing prison inmates limited access to monitored email services. At first, this view stemmed mainly from a desire to let inmates stay in touch with their loved ones, which helps facilitate both rehabilitation and successful reentry. But Hurricane Harvey shows that prisoners' email can also serve as an accountability mechanism by giving voice to eyes and ears inside the prison walls.

State prisoners in harms way were evacuated during the recent floods (no clear, comprehensive picture yet of what happened in county jails), but federal prisoners apparently were not, including several privately operated facilities and a federal prison in Beaumont.

Regarding the latter, the federal Bureau of Prisons told the Houston Chronicle that "although the facility's water source was compromised and had intermittent power, it was 'adequately maintained with generator backup power when needed. There is an adequate food and water supply for both inmates and staff.'" But the Chronicle obtained emails from prisoners family members which told a different story. One described:

a scene where a fellow inmate passed out Thursday night because of malnutrition; inmates haven't had a warm meal in more than five days, he said. Because of the water shortage, four portable toilets were brought in to service the man's building. No chemicals were placed in the toilets, which have already been "topped off" with waste, the man said. 

"Save me Jesus," the man said in an email. "I never thought nothing like this would happen in prison."

From the family member who shared the email: "Animals are treated better then those men. They evacuated all those animals and made sure they were safe, why can't they make sure those men in those units are safe, fed, healthy with clean clothes and enough amount of water? They are people too." The 

If this prisoner's account is accurate and complete, then federal inmates in Beaumont experienced nothing like the horrors that went on in New Orleans with inmates during Katrina. But the rosy picture portrayed by the feds wasn't entirely true. And without prisoner access to email, there would be no credible source to dispute inaccurate government claims.

Sometimes the government misrepresents reality to offer only a self-interested perspective, and the closed nature of prisons makes them especially good at concealing their problems from the outside world. Providing electronic communications access to prisoners can add first-person narratives to the mix to help inform those on the outside what goes on inside.

Texas inmates can pay to have incoming emails printed out and given to them, but cannot send outgoing email.

So, we may add "holding government accountable" to "facilitates rehabilitation" and "improves reentry prospects" among the best argument for providing inmates limited access to monitored email, as has long been successfully accomplished in the well-established federal system.

Federal prison population growth unsustainable

Via the Urban Institute, check out this graphic demonstrating federal prison population growth over the last three decades:

The federal prison system is almost ten times larger today than in 1980. (Texas prison population increased nearly six-fold over the same period.) The underlying data in the above chart comes from a new Urban Institute report titled, “Stemming the Tide: Strategies to Reduce the Growth and Cut the Cost of the Federal Prison System.” See related testimony from Nancy LaVigne from the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center at a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today, in which she pointed out that, "The high costs of maintaining a growing prisoner population have contributed to the increases in the BOP budget relative to the rest of the DOJ: in FY 2000, BOP took up less than 20 percent of the DOJ budget, but we project that by 2020, it will consume more than 30 percent." While BOP spending remains small compared to, say, federal entitlement programs, the growth rate is still unsustainable, she argued. Two other witnesses (see here and here) attempted to rebut the Urban Institute study, and Grits may have more to say reacting to their comments in a future post.

To a much greater extent, even, than Texas' prisons, federal prison growth has been driven mainly by the drug war. According to testimony (pdf) by Federal Bureau of Prison Director Charles Samuels, Jr.:

The large majority of federal inmates, (177,000 of 219,000) are housed in facilities operated by the Bureau, which have a total rated capacity of just under 130,000 beds. The remaining approximately 42,000 inmates are housed in privately operated prisons and residential reentry centers. Most federal inmates (50 percent) are serving sentences for drug trafficking offenses. The remainder of the population includes inmates convicted of weapons offenses (15 percent), immigration offenses (11 percent), violent offenses (5 percent), fraud and other property offenses (7 percent), and sex offenses (10 percent). The average sentence length for inmates in BOP custody is 9½ years. Approximately 26 percent of the federal in mate population is comprised of non-U.S. citizens.

It's remarkable to notice how different the makeup of state inmates in Texas is compared to federal inmates. By contrast, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's 2012 Statistical Report (pdf), 55.3% of Texas inmates are incarcerated for violent offenses (compared to 5% at the feds), and just 16.7% (compared to 50%) are incarcerated for drug offenses. (The percentage of drug offenders in state jail is higher than full-blown prison: 33% compared to 14.8%; the 16.7% figure includes both.)

The proportion of Texas inmates incarcerated for property/fraud/theft offenses is more than double that in the federal system - 16.1%. Only 1.8% of Texas prisoners are incarcerated for weapons offenses, compared to 15% for the feds.

The average sentence length of inmates on hand in TDCJ in 2012 was higher than the feds - 19.3 years compared to 9.5 years. But that's a bit deceptive because, of those entering Texas prisons (as opposed to "state jails," where the max sentence is 2 years), the average sentence length is 7.9 years, and those leaving Texas prisons on average served just 4.4 years.

The federal system keeps folks in longer because there is no parole, a fact which has generated severe overcrowding. Samuels, Jr. testified that: "System-wide, the Bureau is operating at 36 percent over rated capacity and crowding is of special concern at higher security facilities, with 51 percent crowding at high security facilities and 45 percent at medium security facilities." By contrast, Texas' prisoner numbers recently topped out and have begun to decline, allowing the state to close three prison units in the last two sessions. Added LaVigne, "The BOP anticipates adding over 25,000 beds by 2020, but most of these projects have not yet been approved and would not substantially reduce overcrowding."

Texas may face an overincarceration problem, but things are decidedly worse in the federal system.

Wasteful police spending, Big Brother, and prison stories

Here are a few brief items that caught Grits' attention but didn't make it into independent posts:

Eliminate waste rather than throw money at new police hires
The Austin PD is requesting nearly 100 more uniformed officers in the next city budget. As Grits has argued many times, instead of hiring ever-more officers the agency should eliminate waste by requiring burglar alarm companies to implement a verified response system, calling the police only when a crime has actually been committed. Austin doesn't need more police officers it needs to be a lot smarter about using the ones they've got.

More exposure on wiretap expansion bill
The Austin Chronicle has a brief item highlighting the bill expanding wiretapping authority to local police in big cities that Grits discussed here, here, and here. I'm a bit surprised the issue hasn't drawn more attention.

'Lawsuit targets prison company over records request'
See the story at the Texas Tribune.

Letters from La Tuna
The El Paso Times has an interesting pair of stories about and by former businessman Bob Jones, who was "Once one of the most powerful people in El Paso, a larger-than-life figure who traveled in his own private jet" but "is now just another inmate in the federal system." See their feature article and an essay by Jones about his first six months in the federal La Tuna prison in which he describes life in solitary confinement and his experience almost dying from near-fatal E. coli infection. Interesting stuff.

IRS using Big Data for tax enforcement
This is creepy and before long every law enforcement and regulatory agency in the country will probably have similar  capabilities.

Do young people care about online privacy?
Turns out, more than you think.

Sequester effects on federal prisons, immigration detention

Grits finds the expressed outrage over releasing immigration detainees because of the looming sequester misplaced. Texas Congressman Lamar Smith took the opportunity to take a politicized swipe at the Obama Administration, declaring it “either incompetent and unable to prioritize spending, or reckless. Neither is acceptable.” Ironically, though, prioritizing spending is precisely what's going on here ... for once.

The episode made me think of the panel on immigration detention your correspondent moderated at the UT LBJ-School last fall where former state Rep. Jerry Madden, who before this session chaired the House Corrections Committee, argued for saving money by limiting detention of asylum seekers and low-risk immigration detainees, urging the feds to adopt lessons on saving money spent on incarceration that drove Texas' 2007 probation reforms. That's exactly what's happening now thanks to fiscal necessity rather than good public policy. But sequester-imposed austerity makes the important point that immigration detention is not free - even if borrowed budget dollars at times make it seem as though spending on it is unlimited - and is now forcing the feds to engage in cost-benefit analyses regarding which immigrants should be incarcerated while they wait for backlogged courts to process cases.

More concerning than the politicized debate over low-risk immigration releases are the $338 million in cuts to the federal Bureau of Prisons, which has no authority to increase releases to accommodate its reduced budget. According to Business Insider:

The Bureau oversees 188 facilities and contracts 16 facilities out to private prison companies. Currently, there is a grand total of 217,249 inmates in the federal prison system, a number BOP  expects to rise to 229,300 by the end of 2013. In 2012, the BOP had a budget of $6.6 billion, with 41,310 employees. Correctional officers make up around half of the staff, with 19,756 employees in 2012. 

According to DOJ, the sequester budget cuts will result in 5 percent reduction in the Bureau's workforce, which will be achieved by freezing future hiring and furloughing 36,700 staff for an average of 12 days. This means that almost every employee will have to go home without pay for some time, leaving BOP to function at unnecessarily low security levels. 

Attorney General Eric Holder indicated that this reduction in force would endanger the lives of staff and inmates. 

According to the Attorney General, the BOP will have to implement full or partial lock downs across the board. In a letter to Senate Appropriations Chair Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Holder said "This would leave inmates idle, increasing the likelihood of inmate misconduct, violence, and other risks to correctional workers and inmates."

Complicating all of this is the fact that the federal prison system is already severely over capacity.

According to the 2012 Justice Department annual report, the system is 38 percent overcapacity, a problem that the Department has identified as a major weakness.

Holder has said the Department of Justice will be forced to cancel funding for rehabilitation programs and staffing, but, "To be blunt, sequestration means less money, not fewer inmates." The immigration system can safely adjust to lower funding levels. The federal prison system, OTOH, will be screwed six ways from Sunday.

Now-defunct TYC-Geo contract cited as example of revolving-door oversight

Grits hadn't had a chance until this morning to take a look at the new report on private prisons out of ACLU national that's been getting lots of press: "Banking on bondage: Private prisons and mass incarceration" (pdf). Here are a few notable quotes:

the crippling cost of imprisoning increasing numbers of Americans saddles government budgets with rising debt and exacerbates the current fiscal crises confronting states across the nation.

Leading private prison companies essentially admit that their business model depends on high rates of incarceration. For example, in a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company, stated: “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices . . . .”

Further:

As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding ever more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits. Private prisons for adults were virtually non-existent until the early 1980s, but the number of prisoners in private prisons increased by approximately 1600% between 1990 and 2009. Today, for-profit companies are responsible for approximately 6% of state prisoners, 16% of federal prisoners, and, according to one report, nearly half of all immigrants detained by the federal government. In 2010, the two largest private prison companies alone received nearly $3 billion dollars in revenue, and their top executives, according to one source, each received annual compensation packages worth well over $3 million.

Another section of the report critiques the corporate-friendly American Legislative Exchange Council, declaring that "ALEC has not only done work that helped increase the amount of taxpayer money spent on corrections generally but has also supported policies likely to increase the proportion of corrections spending funneled to private corporations."

The report also documents the impact of expanded federal immigration detention practices which has been a hobby horse of this blog for many years. "The past decade has borne out the prediction that 9/11 would be good business for private prisons. By 2010, the average daily population of immigration detainees stood at 31,020, more than a 50% increase over the 2001 level (and an increase of roughly 450% over the 1994 level)."

One notable critique held that "Many in the private prison industry, however, once served in state corrections departments, and numerous state corrections officials formerly worked for private prison companies. In some cases, this revolving door between public corrections and private prisons may contribute to the ability of some companies to win contracts or to avoid sufficient scrutiny from the corrections departments charged with overseeing their operations." Moreover, the main case study used to support this contention (p. 38 of the pdf) was a Texas case: A disastrous private contract between the GEO Group and the soon-to-be-defunct Texas Youth Commission, which had hired former Geo employees to monitor their contract to manage the since-closed Coke County facility.

In both juvenile and adult settings, the "revolving door" phenomenon is something about which one hears numerous back-room whispers, but seldom fact-based documentation. It happens, but how commonly? I've never seen hard data, but could cite many anecdotes. Most blatantly, federal Bureau of Prisons chief Harvey Lappin this year left federal employment to become an executive at Corrections Corporation of America. Adds the report, "The company’s payroll also includes a second former BOP Director: J. Michael Quinlan serves as a Senior Vice President of CCA." In 2010, President Obama named a high-dollar Geo Group consultant the head of the US Marshals service. And I know there's at least some cross-pollination between TDCJ and private contractors.

Grits wonders what a more comprehensive review would reveal about this "revolving door" pheomenon between the leadership of private and state-run prison systems? Anecdotally it seems common, particularly among top decisionmakers who might have sway influencing government contracts. But the Coke County example involved lower-level employees migrating back and forth from state to private employment being hired to provide oversight to their former (and potentially future) employer. That situation strikes me as potentially fairly common and makes me wonder precisely how deep that particular rabbit hole goes?

MORE: From Texas Prison Bidness, Sentencing Law & Policy, CNBC, and NPR.