A state arbitrator has stymied Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to close two prisons, saying that state officials must first properly negotiate with union representatives about the impact of the closures, reports The Associated Press.
The governor wanted the prisons closed by late October, but Arbitrator Steven Bierig found prison officials violated its contract with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, reports the AP.
The governor’s communications director said the decision is being appealed.
State lawmakers disagreed with the prison closures and set aside money in the budget to keep them open. Quinn vetoed the budget, saying the state could not afford the prisons’ operating cost.
When corrections officials began moving prisoners out of the Tamms facility to the Pontiac Correctional Center in August, union officials filed a lawsuit asking the judge to declare the arbitrator’s decision binding and order the state to comply, according to the AP.
The union’s executive director said the Legislature funded the prisons because they recognized closing the prisons would “destabilize the entire prison system, worsen dangerous overcrowding and put the safety of employees, inmates, youth and the public at risk.”
The union has since filed another lawsuit claiming that mixing prisoners they deem dangerous with other prisoners, coupled with the overcrowding, would violate a health and safety clause in the union contract.
S.Q. Veteran’s Group Awards Scholarships
Two children of U.S. armed service members wrote compelling essays and won scholarships of $1,250 dollars each from San Quentin’s military veterans group.
RECIPIENTS
Winners were Olivia Piazza of Tomales High School and Saskia Tingley of Healdsburg High School.
The scholarships were presented to the high school graduates at the Vietnam Veterans Group of San Quentin at its 26th Annual Awards Banquet.
“I’m a single mother. I really appreciate and am honored by the financial assistance,” said Piazza.
“I wore my dress blues (military uniform) on the plane when I returned to the U.S. from overseas” during the Vietnam War, said Eugene Piazza, Olivia’s father. “When I arrived, I was spit on. This night makes up for a lot of what I felt at that moment,”
Tingley was unable to attend the event. Veterans from past and recent military conflicts attended the banquet in the Protestant Chapel.
MENSA MEMBER
Piazza is a member of MENSA, an organization for persons with high IQs, and attends Santa Rosa Junior College, where she maintains a 4.5 (A-plus) grade-point average. She plans to get her degree in biochemistry at the University of California at Berkeley
VVGSQ members Garvin Robinson, Ernest Vick, James Snider and Darryl Farris chose Piazza and Tingley’s essays out of 200 candidates.
SELECTION
They selected winners based on essay content, GPA, plans for further education, and their volunteer work.
Piazza’s mother and sisters attended the banquet along with her father.
Her dad served in the 7th Artillery from 1966 to 1968. “As I accept this scholarship, I think of how proud I am that my father served his country,” said Olivia.
The June 17 banquet featured Presentation of the Colors by San Quentin’s Color Guard, including the American and Prisoner of War flags.
“One of the best things the VVGSQ does, they do for the community by giving out scholarships to kids who are in need,” said Gloria Godchaux of Operation Mom.
SPONSORS
Also attending were correctional Lt. Ken Evans, the group’s chief sponsor, co-sponsor correctional Lt. Rudy Luna, Outside Veteran Coordinator the Rev. Terry Wolf and Veteran Service Officer Sean Stephens.
“I did four tours in Afghanistan for the U.S. Army 29th Infantry Battalion,” said Stephens. “Coming in here and working with Ron Self and these guys helps me more than I help them.”
The VVGSQ has awarded scholarships to the children of American veterans since 1990.
— JulianGlenn Padgett contributed to this story.
Noted Program Leader Leaves S.Q. This Summer
Laura Bowman-Salzsieder, who has been integral to building San Quentin’s reputation as a “programming prison,” will be leaving this summer.
Some 70 programs that help men turn their lives around have been assisted by Bowman-Salzsieder, manager of community partnerships at San Quentin.
After leaving San Quentin, she and her husband, a lieutenant colonel who has been in the Army for 26 years, will be moving to Florida.
For the last eight years, Bowman-Salzsieder has linked the outside community with prisoners and staff, helping facilitate a rehabilitative atmosphere seen at no other California prison.
“Good things are possible when good people work together,” said Bowman-Salzsieder.
She is the primary liaison to the local community on almost all things regarding the institution’s delivery of rehabilitation services, particularly San Quentin’s community participation programs, or Leisure Time Activity Groups. Bowman-Salzsieder coordinates the more than 3,000 visitors and volunteers that come into the prison each year.
She began as a bridging teacher in the prison’s Education Department, where Tony Beebe, the current principal, was a mentor to her, she says. She admits that when she took the community partnership position, it increased her workload so tremendously that her time became spread very thin. Yet despite all the responsibilities her position imposed on her, she said she has thoroughly enjoyed the job.
“It is very hard to think back to only one fond memory that I have had here at San Quentin,” said Bowman-Salzsieder. “There have been so many.”
She enthusiastically points to the prison’s Vietnam Veterans Group, Shakespeare in San Quentin, the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, the Get on The Bus Program, the 1000-Mile Club, and all the various graduations that she has attended as examples of the successes that are possible when people come together.
–Aly Tamboura contributed to this story.
United States Has World’s Highest Rate of Incarceration
The United States has the world’s highest rate of incarceration or “correctional control,” and one of the causes is changes in sentencing laws.
According to various reports, during the 1980s, the United States locked up around 200 people per 100,000 of the population. By 2010, that number more than tripled to 731 per 100,000.
Today, roughly six million Americans are under some kind of “correctional supervision” – that’s more than at the peak of the Stalin era gulags, reports the New Yorker in a recent article. The story spotlights America’s extensive prison system where “huge numbers of whom are serving sentences much longer than those given for similar crimes anywhere else in the civilized world.”
From 1980 to 2003, California prisons have quadrupled their population even though violent crime has remained relatively constant or even declined, according to the American Society of Criminology.
The increases were most pronounced in the use of life prison sentences – upped by 83 percent between 1992 and 2003, Wikipedia notes.
The percentage of prisoners in state and federal prisons aged 55 and older increased by 33 percent from 2000 to 2005 while the prison population grew by only eight percent.
California’s fastest growing age category are those prisoners over the age 55, according to the Human Rights Watch. Ronald Aday, a professor of aging, predicts 16 percent of those serving life sentences will be elderly by 2020.
Prison administrators around the country report spending more than 10 percent of their state’s annual budget on elderly prisoner care, Wikipedia finds.
California currently has 8,780 Three Strikers; 25,135 lifers with the possibility of parole; 4,303 serving life without the possibility of parole; and 715 condemned.
Editor’s Note: This article utilized data from: The Sentencing Project: The State of Sentencing, 2011; Prison Census Data as of June 2011; PEW One in 31, The Long Reach of American Corrections; American Society of Criminology; The New Yorker magazine, Wikipedia, and Human Rights Watch.
–Juan Haines contributed to this story.
The U.S. Has World’s Highest Incarceration Rate
America leads the world in the number of its people under correctional control, according to a report by the PEW Center on the States.
The report says one in 31 U.S. adults were under correctional control in 2008, the latest year for complete data.
The PEW study defined correctional control as the total number of people in prison and jail, combined with those on probation and parole.
The U.S. had an incarceration rate of 753 per 100,000 in 2010, which is 240 percent higher than in 1980.
Others in the top 10 are 629 Russia, 593 Rwanda. 476 Belize, 423 Georgia, 407 Bahamas, 385 Belarus, 382 Kazakhstan and 365 French Guiana.
Other major rates include 224 per 100,000 for Poland and 209 for Mexico. At the lower end are Iceland 44, Japan 63, Denmark 66, Finland 67, Norway 70 and Sweden 74.
Incarceration costs are forcing the U.S. to consider alternatives seriously. A 2010 report by the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) found that federal, state and local governments spent nearly $75 billion on corrections in 2008. This expenditure for correctional control of a record 7,328,200 U.S. adults has an affect on local economies. William Wrenn, New Hampshire Commissioner of Corrections said, “It’s not about being tough on crime or soft on crime. We are facing a huge economic challenge here. Are we doing the right thing?”
California built 21 new prisons from 1984 through 1995 to accommodate its prison population, while building only one new university during that same period. This approach to crime and punishment drove California’s prison expenditures up by 30 percent between 1987 and 1995, while at the same time decreasing higher education expenditures by 18 percent.
The CEPR said non-violent offenders make up over 60 percent of the prison and jail population. “We calculate that a reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate of non-violent offenders would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9 billion per year and return the U.S. to about the same incarceration rate we had in 1993,” the CEPR report said. “A review of extensive research on incarceration and crime suggests that these savings could be achieved without any appreciable deterioration in public safety.”