The Prison Explosion, Part 3a

PRISON GET-TOUGH POLICIES PUSH REHABILITATION ASIDE

In 1996, Gov. George Pataki commuted the lengthy prison sentences of seven
people, six of whom, he noted on their behalf, had dutifully earned college
degrees in prison.

The irony is that, a year earlier, Pataki had eliminated the college
program from the New York state budget.

Today, except for a few privately funded programs, inmates cannot take free
college courses, despite studies showing they cut the return rate to prison
by half.

The loss of college prison programs -- which cost the equivalent of less
than 1 percent of the prison budget -- is just one outgrowth of the
tough-on-crime mentality in current vogue. While New York's 71 prisons are
in many ways better than many nationwide, the emphasis, say prison reform
advocates, has shifted ever more toward punishment and away from
rehabilitation.

Serving long, hard time

State officials say while punishment comes first, rehabilitation is still a
high priority. Nonetheless, if you are in prison in New York in the year
2000, you are:

- Much more likely to do significant time in "The Box" or other
disciplinary housing where you're locked away for 23 hours a day -- as
fully 8 percent of the population now is.

- Much more likely to be sentenced to a longer term.

- Much less likely to be paroled when your minimum term is up.

- Much less likely to qualify for work programs in the community.

You may share a cell that was designed for one person. You'll attend
classes of 25 that used to hold 15 in the belief that prison class size
should mirror that in the community. And if you committed a violent crime,
you may not get drug treatment.

This is not to say that New York's prisons compare poorly to others.

"I have nothing but the highest regard for the New York correctional
system," said Robert Verdeyen, accreditation director for the American
Correctional Association. He said New York was one of the first states to
have all of its prisons accredited.

"There are still good programs in the prison system; there are still good
people from the top down,'' agreed Robert Gangi, executive director of the
New York Correctional Association, which provides prison oversight. "The
overall picture, though, is a system that is moving toward a more punitive
approach, depending less on programs and rehabilitation and more on
punishment."

Officials of the state Department of Correctional Services steadfastly deny
prison is a more desolate place.

''We have more inmates in programs today than ever before,'' said James
Flateau, spokesman for Commissioner Glenn Goord, who declined an interview.

More inmates are getting high school equivalency degrees, the number
enrolled in vocational programs is up and the rates of assaults on staff
and inmates are at their lowest points in 14 and seven years, respectively,
he said.

Further, prison officials maintain that double-celling of inmates -- in
cells as small as 45 square feet -- has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme
Court, which ruled: "The Constitution does not mandate comfortable prisons."

Families fear restlessness

Critics of state prisons acknowledge people are in prison to be punished.
But many, including families of prisoners, agencies that provide legal
assistance and oversight groups like Gangi's, believe harsher discipline,
program cuts and longer, harder time is leading, inevitably, toward two
things: More tension inside prisons and more certainty that those released
will be back.

"The conditions today are a groundswell for another Attica,'' said Harold
Walker, a former inmate involved in the 1971 Attica prison uprising that
killed 43 people. He is now a paralegal for Prisoners Legal Services in
Poughkeepsie, which represents inmates.

An attempt last January for a work stoppage by inmates -- and the official
response to it -- is proof of growing unrest, prison reform groups say.

Dubbed Y2K, plans for the alleged action at Green Haven Correctional
Facility in Stormville and Sing-Sing in Ossining were quickly ended when
dozens of inmates were put in special housing units -- the modern
equivalent of solitary confinement. There, inmates do not participate in
programs, are let out once a day for an hour and have little human contact.
Hans Toch, distinguished criminal justice professor at the State University
at Albany, called them "the functional equivalent of dungeons."

Prison legal advocates say 55 of 84 disciplinary sentences appealed after
the action were either reduced or reversed -- proof, they say, of what
Karen Murtagh-Monks, an attorney for Prisoners Legal Services, called a
"broad, panic-motivated, sweep."

"It really was an abuse of the system,'' said Joan Simon Faulkner, another
attorney for the organization. Many inmates spent months in ''Box''
confinement before the sentences were modified, she and others said.

'Due process works'

Prison officials acknowledged sentences were reversed -- and point to that
as proof the due process system works. As for the months that innocent
inmates spent confined, Flateau said, ''That's the way the system works,
whether it's in prison or out of prison. We weren't going to wait until...
somebody got hurt.''

Inmates at Green Haven were threatening inmates who refused to participate
and two containers of gunpowder were found, he said.

Since 1995, the corrections department has added 3,500 special housing beds
-- a 142 percent increase -- including a special housing prison in Franklin
County and nine 100-cell additions.

Before the beds were built, many inmates served disciplinary sentences in
their own cells, under what is called "keeplock," where they were not
isolated from the general population. But since the new beds were added,
legal advocates for prisoners agreed, offenses that used to draw short
sentences are now getting significant "Box" time, in part, they believe, to
keep those beds filled.

More time in isolation

Figures provided by the department after repeated requests confirm an
increase in long sentences.

- Sentences of six months or more to special housing units grew by 44
percent from 1995 to 1999; the shortest sentences, less than 30 days,
dropped by 30 percent. (The prison population grew 7 percent.)

- For special housing and keeplock sentences combined, the increase was 32
percent for sentences of six months or more since 1995, while the sentences
of less than 30 days dropped by 4 percent.

Dennis Fitzpatrick, spokesman for the correctional officers union, said the
use of disciplinary housing has had ''a tremendous chilling effect" on
inmate violence.

"All inmates -- not just staff -- are safer when disruptive inmates are
locked up," Commissioner Goord wrote in an in-house newsletter in May,
which was in response to a critical report on special housing in the Albany
Times Union newspaper. Goord maintained then that the "average SHU (special
housing unit) sentence has remained at six months for the past five years."

Flateau said the six-month figure was "the considered opinion of the
professionals'' in the department and that no average figures were available.

When presented data on the increase in the lengthiest sentences, he amended
the department's position: ''The average sentence for the same offense is
the same as it was five years ago,'' he said.

"The length of time inmates are spending isolated in SHUs is alarming,''
wrote the New York Catholic Conference of Bishops in a statement issued
last year, noting that Box time can "induce psychosis in inmates with
mental disorders, and serious psychotic symptoms in inmates with prior
mental illness."

The Capital Region Ecumenical Organization in the Albany area called the
use of special housing and keeplock "punishments that both treat inmates as
if they are less than human and border on vengeance."

To many, the use of special housing units may be a necessary response to
the state policies that diminish chances for self-improvement and early
release.

"Inmates are misbehaving in more and more extreme ways than before,'' said
Ted Conover, author of "Newjack," a recently released book about his months
as a correction officer at Sing Sing. "It's a pretty fair indicator of a
decline in hope and increase in self-hate."

Said Flateau, the department spokesman, ''It's driven by inmate behavior,
not by anything we've done.''

To be sure, there is still evidence of good prison programs. Current and
former inmates spoke of learning welding and plumbing, graduating drug
treatment programs and finishing their high school education.

One of the chief accomplishments that DOCS points to is the number of
graduate equivalency degrees issued since 1995, which grew 14 percent while
the prison population itself grew 7 percent. The prison passing rate in
1999, 60 percent, was actually higher than the general population's, 57
percent.

But the growth in degrees awarded since 1991 -- 16 percent -- actually
flagged behind the growth in the prison population -- 24 percent. And more
recently, both the number of degrees earned and the passing rate dropped
from 1998 to 1999.

Significantly, DOCS increased the ratio of teachers to inmates from 1 to 15
to 1 to 25 in the mid-1990s. In a statement, Goord said this was "in
recognition of the constraints and fiscal realities that require every
school district across the state to maintain teacher-to-pupil ratios
greater than those in prison."

Fewer opportunities

Other changes clearly reduce inmate opportunities.

n In 1994, 864 inmates received college degrees under programs funded by
federal and state education grants for poor students. Both were eliminated
in the mid-1990s. Only 70 inmates were awarded degrees last year in a
handful of privately funded programs.

"Here we have an almost proven technique to help reduce recidivism and
we're not using it,'' said Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, a Queens Democrat
who is chairman of the Corrections Committee.

In response to a 1997 report critical of the cuts, Goord wrote that "only
3,000 to 3,500 inmates participated in college programs," while about
47,000 inmates lacked a high school degree -- the focus of DOCS education
programs.

In defense of clemency given to inmates who had received college degrees,
he said, "It is obvious that far more than academic credentials entered
into the governor's decision."

- Work release, a program that prepared inmates for release by having them
work in the community, was eliminated for violent offenders by Pataki in
1995, reducing participants from 18,000 to 7,100 last year.

The New York Correctional Association maintains that leaves prisoners less
prepared for release and hence more likely to fail.

"Work release is considered a valuable program that prepares participants
for a gradual, supervised re-integration into the community,'' the
association said in a statement.

Flateau, the prison spokesman, said the work-release decision was a
''philosophical call. ... The governor and the Legislature made a decision
that violent felons belong behind prison walls.''

Statistics conflict

In 1994, then-Corrections Commissioner Thomas Coughlin testified at a
hearing in defense of work release, maintaining there were only 11 arrests
of 1,000 work-release participants convicted of murder or manslaughter. And
their arrests were not for violent crimes but things like drug possession
and trespass, he said.

State officials, however, point to other statistics since work release was
eliminated: an 89 percent decrease in people who absconded from the program
and a 95 percent decrease in violent felonies charged to participants.
That's tempered somewhat by the fact that there was also a 60 percent
decrease in participants in the program and a 20 percent drop in felony
arrests statewide in that time.

- Eliminating work release for violent felons had a ripple effect. It
reduced the number of inmates involved in intensive substance abuse
treatment programs that served as a prelude to the program. After
increasing steadily throughout the early 1990s, the number of people
involved in the Comprehensive Alcohol and Substance Abuse Treatment Program
dropped from 1,809 in 1996 to 1,275 this year, according to state figures.
Now the only drug treatment at maximum-security prisons is through
Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous groups, self-help groups that do not
involve professional counseling.

Excluding NA and AA, about one in seven prisoners was enrolled in alcohol
and substance abuse programs as of October, state figures show.
Fitzpatrick, the corrections union spokesman, said current programs are
good but are too short in duration.

"The truly meaningful programs must be established from the beginning to
the end of a person's incarceration,'' he said -- as opposed to "a shot-gun
form of six months out of a five-year commitment."

''Unions can make statements like that,'' countered prison spokesman
Flateau. ''They don't have to worry about tax dollars.''

- Chances of being paroled have been reduced across the board since the
early 1990s, leaving prisoners with little hope that a good behavioral
record will lead to parole. For violent crimes, the decrease was dramatic
-- from 48 percent in 1994 to 21 in 1999 -- but the rate also dropped 9
percentage points for drug offenses.

"People who are different are being treated exactly the same,'' said
Claudette Spencer, staff attorney for the Prisoners Rights Project.
"Nothing is being looked at (at parole hearings) except the crime, which is
never going to change."

Less chance to grow

All this means that inmates have less to do and are more embittered toward
a system that seems not to care about their welfare or reform, say inmates
themselves, their families and their advocates.

"We have to start with the basic question: What is the purpose of our
prisons?" said Terry Derikart, director of Families Against Mandatory
Minimums, which favors drug-law reform. "Right now, it's very punitive.
There's very little rehabilitation."

"One of the most common complaints from inmates and staff is the loss of
programs and increased idleness," said Gangi, of the Correctional
Association, which criticized DOCS in a 1997 report for reductions in
teachers, drug counselors and vocational programs.

Goord called the association's report on staff cuts "discredited."

"The fact that DOCS is delivering old services in new, unique and
innovative ways does not in any way diminish our dedication to our goals,''
he wrote in response to the Correctional Association's report, which, he
said, "equates program opportunity directly and solely to the number of
staff employed."

From 1995 through 1999, department figures show, the number of people
earning vocational certificates rose 8 percent, about twice the rate of
population growth.

But Gangi said DOCS plays "a smoke-and-mirrors game" with its numbers. Jobs
such as porter, in which an inmate mops floors and such, can take an hour a
day and are not meaningful job training, he contended. Flateau said they
aren't usually counted that way, although errors occur.

To Susan Jeffords, a 17-year parole officer and president of the parole
officers' association, program cuts and the lack of support after release
have clear results.

She said, "I think they're less prepared to be released and to do well.''