Florida has officially thrown out its flawed felon voter list . Had this been done in time for the 2000 election, many, TalkLeft included, believe George Bush would not have won Florida - or the Presidency.

Florida elections officials said Saturday they would not use a disputed list of people believed to be convicted felons to purge voter rolls, acknowledging a flaw that kept some Hispanic felons off the list and could have allowed them to vote. The glitch in a state that President Bush won by a margin of just 537 votes could have been significant - Hispanics in Florida have tended to vote Republican more than Hispanics nationally. The list had about 28,000 Democrats and around 9,500 Republicans, with most of the rest unaffiliated.

Now Florida needs to go the final mile. It is one of only a small number of states that refuses to automatically restore voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences.

by TChris

Anne-Marie Cusac has been "reporting on abuse and mistreatment in our nation's jails and prisons for the last eight years." When Donald Rumsfeld claimed that the abuse at Abu Ghraib "doesn't represent American values," she wasn't convinced.

Reporters and commentators keep asking, how could this happen? My question is, why are we surprised when many of these same practices are occurring at home?

Writing for The Progressive, Cusac recounts some of the horror stories she's investigated, draws connections between those practices and the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and asks whether "we have so dehumanized U.S. prisoners that we have become as distant from them as we are from foreign captives in faraway lands."

How could this happen? Apart from the tendency of prison administrators to adopt a military model of punishment (including "boot camps"), Cusak suggests that much of the public has accepted (and the media haven't challenged) the "tough on crime" assumptions about people serving sentences:

We have acquired a set of unexamined beliefs: 1) people who land in jail deserve to be there; 2) criminals are bad people--almost subhuman--who can't be rehabilitated; 3) therefore, punishment can be as harsh as possible; and 4) we don't need or want to know the details. These beliefs ... may help to explain why revelations of prison and jail abuse in the United States, which have been numerous in the past two decades, can fall on deaf ears in this country even as they prompt protest abroad. The revelations at Abu Ghraib shock us because our soldiers abroad seem to have acted out behaviors that we condone, yet don't face up to, at home.

Further TalkLeft discussion of the connection between abuse at Abu Ghraib and at home can be found here and here and here and here.

by TChris

As a service to its corporate readership, Forbes offers a tour of the best places to go to prison, complete with slide show. It also offers a brief recap of the alleged corporate criminals "who may have to trade Armani suits for jumpsuits."

We love stories with happy endings. This one is about Eddie Miller. For the past 44 of his 69 years, he has led a law-abiding life in Florida, married with children. Recently, there was a knock on his door. It was the police with a warrant for his arrest. Turns out he had walked away from a Georgia prison detail 44 years ago. He admitted he was the same Eddie Miller they were looking for and they hauled him back to Georgia and put him in jail. He did okay there, no complaints. The prisoners were pretty young and violent and called him "Pops," but he accepted his fate. He never even hired a lawyer.

Here's the happy ending:

by TChris

California's prison system is a mess, as TalkLeft has frequently reported. A report prepared by a 40-member panel appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger agrees, describing the prison system as "dysfunctional."

It presented a long-term strategy to improve public safety and save money by lowering one of the nation's highest reimprisonment rates of former inmates. It also placed a new emphasis on inmate education and rehabilitation.

The report proposes replacing the California Youth and Adult Correctional Agency with a new Department of Correctional Services run by a commission that would meet publicly. The proposed change is designed to end a structure in which prison wardens act as "feudal barons" who set their own rules.

The report also proposes reforms in the recruitment, training, and discipline of prison guards. The reforms seek to end the current "code of silence" that protects abusive prison guards, and to protect whistleblowers from retaliation.

In 2001, MCC Brooklyn, a federal detention center for pre-trial arrestees who aren't allowed to or can't make bail pending their trials and sentencings, began videotaping lawyers meeting with their clients. And they lied about it. Yesterday, the lawyers filed a lawuit seeking thousands in damages.

When lawyers from the Legal Aid Society made their way into the federal detention center in Brooklyn in the fall of 2001 to meet with detainees, they said, they were alarmed to see video cameras on the walls. Concerned about the confidentiality of their conversations with their shackled clients - immigrant detainees who were rounded up after the Sept. 11 attacks - the lawyers asked whether they were being taped. Prison officials assured them, they say, that the cameras were turned off.

But the cameras were running. The federal prison was intentionally recording the lawyer-client conversations in violation of federal law and prison policy, according to a December report by the inspector general of the Justice Department, Glenn A. Fine. Surreptitiously taping attorney-client communications is a direct attack on the role of counsel and on these Legal Aid attorneys' well-established constitutional rights," said Nelson A. Boxer, a partner of the Dechert law firm, who is representing the lawyers without fee. The plaintiffs are seeking damages under a federal statute that prohibits electronic eavesdropping without court approval and sets $10,000 for each violation. They have agreed to donate any money award to the Legal Aid Society, they said.

We hope the Government has to fork over every red cent for this egregious intrusion.

"If the Justice Department is not going to defend the Constitution, then we will," said Bryan Lonegan, one of the plaintiffs.

CNN and other media outlets prevailed today in their quest for the list of felons Florida wants to purge from the voting rolls. The state will not appeal.

A state court judge in Florida ordered Thursday that the board of elections immediately release a list of nearly 50,000 suspected felons to CNN and other news organizations that last month sued the state for access to copies of the list.
The list is used to determine who will be eligible to vote in November's presidential election in the state.

....In 2000, a similar list was the center of controversy when state officials acknowledged after the election that it contained thousands of names in error, thus barring eligible people from voting. Many of the barred voters were African-Americans, who traditionally tend to vote Democratic. Bush won the state by a 537-vote margin and, with it, the presidency.

Background on the lawsuit is here. Florida needs to pass this constitutional amendment restoring the right to vote to Floridian felons who have completed their sentences. Approximately 600,000 Floridians are banned from voting due to felony convictions according to the Florida Equal Rights Voting Project.

[link via Memeorandum]

We received this by e-mail, and believe it warrants dissemination:

Chanda Bennett, a 27 year old female prisoner of Rockwall County Jail
is being denied her heart and blood pressure medications. She was just transfered to ER on June 24th and diagnosed with a heart attack and in need of a pacemaker Instead the jail transferred back to incarceration and are now refusing to transfer the inmate to the ER for continued radiating arm "electrifying" pain and vomiting. Both are classic symptoms of a heart attack extending and are life threatening emergencies.

Please help by signing
this petition to Texas governor. Chanda is in jail for a nonviolent misdemeanor and her life is in danger from medical neglect.

The Petition ends with:

by TChris

A man who may not live another year, and who clearly poses no continuing threat to society (if he ever did), hopes to be released from prison after almost 30 years. Maurice Carter has always maintained that he didn't commit the crime (shooting a Michigan police officer who survived five bullets) that resulted in his life sentence.

An all-white jury in 1976 sentenced Carter to life in prison for shooting the police officer, even though two key black witnesses insisted Carter was not the gunman.

One witness recanted at the trial, saying he identified Carter to save himself from a drug conviction. The other witness, the store clerk at the shop who waited on the gunman for 10 minutes, also testified that Carter was not the gunman.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm granted Carter a medical commutation of his sentence, giving him a chance to receive a liver transplant that he probably wouldn't have had while in prison. Carter's release may be delayed, however, if the officer's family members continue to object.

Whether or not Carter is innocent, it makes no sense to force the elderly or infirm to die behind bars. They pose no threat to society, and the opportunity to die with dignity should outweigh society's desire for retribution.

by TChris

As TalkLeft has repeatedly argued, prison abuses in Iraq and Guantanamo are merely an extension of the less heralded abuses inflicted on prisoners at home. That point may be starting to sink in, as evidenced by a public forum about the inequities of the criminal justice system held in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area of Iowa last night.

The evening focused on injustice at home and abroad, and how prison abuse in Iraq and the U.S. are closely related. After the speeches and discussion, attendants marched to the Black Hawk County Courthouse to emphasize their message of peace and justice.

by TChris

The media like to portray "prisons for the rich" as pleasurable summer camps, but that won't be Lea Fastow's experience.

Instead, on July 12, she will move into the austere, high-rise Federal Detention Center downtown. A closet-size cell there will be her home while she serves a one-year sentence after pleading guilty last month to tax evasion.

Besides dealing with the dangers and indignities of prison life -- from the threat of violence and routine strip searches to scratchy toilet paper and narrow bunk beds -- Mrs. Fastow, 42, is likely to find that the mixed-sex, highly secure detention center will be anything but the kind of pastoral prison camp that many people still associate with white-collar criminals. And, former convicts say, her time will be more difficult because she is a woman, white and wealthy.

It's doubtful that Fastow's time will be more difficult because she's white, but prison policies assure that her gender will work against her. She won't be allowed one of the most desirable jobs -- kitchen duty -- because of the sexist assumption that only men can do the heavy lifting that food preparation requires.

Women are not eligible for the coveted jobs -- trimming the trees and shrubbery around the center or loading supplies at a nearby warehouse -- that let inmates go outside; those jobs are also reserved for men. The only sunlight that women at the detention center see is the vague glow that permeates the four-inch-wide frosted-glass windows in their cells.

Prisons are dehumanizing institutions for the rich as well as the poor. Wealth shouldn't dictate the conditions of incarceration -- prison conditions need to improve for everyone -- but treating female prisoners less favorably than male inmates shouldn't be part of the punishment.

by TChris

It's tough to maintain a relationship with a child -- especially a young child -- while serving time behind bars. Parents often don't want their children to experience the frightening image of confinement; sometimes, they just can't overcome their shame so they ask the kids to stay away. And even when kids and parents want to visit, they need to find transportation and a willing adult escort.

The Long Distance Dads program is trying to help. Operating in about 160 facilities in 26 states, the program helps incercerated fathers build parenting and relationship skills while working to keep them in touch with their children.

Such programs "can make a difference not just in the lives of children, but in the recidivism rate - keeping these guys out, and making them productive citizens," says Charles Stuart, the former director of incarcerated father programming for the National Fatherhood Initiative, which runs Long Distance Dads.