San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

Occupational licenses out of reach for most felons

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Inmates in a Career Technical Education Program

People who have served time in prison are likely to find many occupational licenses unavailable to them – licenses that are necessary to earn a living.

More than 10,000 regulations can prevent people with criminal records from obtaining licenses, according to an article on Independent.co.uk,

These restrictions make it difficult to enter or get ahead in fast-growing industries such as health care, human services and some mechanical trades. The restrictions often include the very jobs they’ve trained for in prison or in re-entry programs.

“In many states, a criminal record is a stain that you can’t wash off,” said Steven Slivinski, an economist at the Center for the Study of Economic Liberty at Arizona State University. “There is no amount of studying that can take away this mark on your past if a licensing board wants to use it against you.”

The Sept. 14, 2019 story cites the case of Meko Lincoln, who served time for robbery, assault and various drug crimes. He is in a Rhode Island reentry program where he is training to be a drug and alcohol counselor. He believes his past was not a liability but an asset. “I lived it, I understand it…I can help another person save a life.”

Previously Lincoln relapsed after completing the 90-day training program. As a result, he was convicted of assault, heroin possession, and stealing drugs and sent back to prison. He received a three-year sentence.

“Instead of facing life on its terms, I kind of folded like a lawn chair,” Lincoln said.

While back in prison, he learned to read and write from another inmate. He read the Quran and embraced Islam. In this religion he learned to forgive himself and others. He also participated in behavioral therapy, attending a chemical dependency program. In this program he was inspired to become a counselor as a career. Now, according to the article, he’s living clean, sober and healthy.

“He has the life experience that would allow somebody else to say, ‘Well. if Meko can do it, I can possibly do it too,’ said Amos House Chief Executive Eileen Hayes.

In this program he works as a “peer recovery coach,” earning $25,000 a year and receives advanced training in this program.

“Licensing legitimizes us as somebody,” says Lincoln. “It’s recognition.” It isn’t all about recognition, however. It’s about earning a living. In Rhode Island, Lincoln’s home state, a licensed chemical dependency technician earns $50,000 a year but Lincoln’s drug convictions may make him ineligible.

There’s another side to the issue of public safety. States with the strictest licensing barriers tend to have higher rates of recidivism, according to research by Stephen Slivinski, an economist at the Center for the Study of Economic Liberty at Arizona State University.

Rhode Island does not officially bar people with criminal histories from being licensed in HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) and other mechanical trades but they might as well.

Bill Okerholm, an HVAC instructor in Rhode Island, said that the union of plumbers, pipefitters and refrigeration technicians accepts people with records as apprentices on a case-by-case basis. But of the 250 men he’s trained at the prison in the past five years, Okerholm can’t recall a single person who has been licensed after release.

California passed legislation in 2018 that required convictions to be “substantially related” to an occupation in-order to deny a license.

PEC volunteers, employers, career and education professionals at Employer Day
PEC volunteers, employers, career and education professionals at Employer Day

Hidden costs of incarceration costs families billions

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There is a huge hidden cost of incarceration that is born by friends and families of prisoners, the Marshall Project https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/12/17/the-hidden-cost-of-incarceration reports.

“The Bureau of Justice Statistic reckons that the United States spends more than $80 billion each year to keep roughly 2.3 million people behind bars,” the Dec. 17 story said.

“Many experts say that figure is a gross underestimate, though, because it leaves out myriad hidden costs that are often borne by prisoners and their loved ones,” the report stated.

The Prison Policy Initiative https://www.prisonpolicy.org/ estimates families spend $2.9 billion a year on commissary accounts and phone calls.

The story lists several family cost examples:

Telita Hayes sends $200 each month to the prison trust account of her ex-husband William Reese, confined to the Louisiana State Penitentiary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_State_Penitentiary for the last 28 years.

The $2,161 placed in his account this year is but one of many “hidden” costs incurred by Hayes, according to the Marshall Project article. She’s also paid $3,586 for collect calls and $419 for e-mails.

“I think the biggest misconception that people have about prison is that the state pays for everything,” said Connie Martin, a Hazel Park, Mich., resident. “No one realizes that it’s the friends and families of loved ones who pay.”

Kae Boone, 52, spends $100 a month on her boyfriend, Charles Lee Isaac, 52, serving time at Graceville Work Camp in Florida.

He failed a drug test, a violation of his parole. Boone said the money she sends goes toward toiletries and food.

Sending the money has forced her to make tradeoffs, struggling to pay her own bills. “I had one of my cars repossessed because I would prefer to send him money and make sure he’s taken care of,” she said.

A trend that took off during the recession in 2008, when state legislators looked for ways to cut down the cost of incarceration, according to Hadar Aviram, professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law. https://www.uchastings.edu/ “Public prisons are public only by name,” she said. “These days, you pay for everything in prison.”

The state approves vendors that the incarcerated persons can purchase items from or have their families open up an accounts.

The same items that use to be sent in from home now must be purchased from these vendors at inflated cost, the story said.

Hayes said, “The price is jacked up on everything.” She estimated that over the last two years she has spent $10,000 supporting her ex-husband who is serving a life sentence.

Funding for higher education in prison

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Incarcerated men and women seeking a college education face challenges due to funding restraints, a new report finds.

Funding for incarcerated college students stalled when the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was enacted in 1994 and eliminated federally funded Pell grants. Student enrollments dropped 44% in one year, and 20 states reduced college courses.

The report, ITHAKA S+R (Unbarring Access) found that Pell grants cover a small percentage of incarcerated college students. The numbers could be dropping even lower.

Some prisons prioritize access to higher education based on the amount of time that person has left on his or her sentence.

Several barriers also hinder efficient higher education:

• Write ups, (Prison infractions)

• No GED or High school diploma

• Age

• Crime and conviction

• Tab test

• Length of incarceration

• No U.S. citizen and

social security number

• No one receives a Second Chance Pell grant if the applicant has any government loans in default or has not registered for Selective Service.

• Funds are suspended if the incarcerated student is convicted for the sale or use of illegal drugs.

The report said prison education programs use a “carrot for good behavior,” an incentive for those incarcerated who “behave the best.”

Despite push back from correctional officers, the report found programs have awarded thousands of Associate, Bachelor’s and even Master’s degrees across the nation since 1972.

Prosecuted Louisiana warden pleads guilty to fraud charges

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A former Louisiana prison warden has pleaded guilty to federal fraud and conspiracy charges.

“He’ll pay for it … prison time will be recommended under the [federal] guidelines,” said David Joseph, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana. “And he will pay restitution for the crimes.”

Cain, 51, faced 17 counts of wire fraud and a single count of conspiracy, reported theadvocate.com. He is former warden of Avoyelles Correctional Center, which has since been renamed the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center,

The charges stem from transactions that may amount to as much as $150,000 for the purchases of personal use items like guns, accessories, flat screen TVs, Yeti coolers, toilet paper, coffee and building supplies for the construction of a new house on prison grounds, according to the article Tonia Bandy, Cain’s former wife and fellow prison employee, had already pled guilty to unspecified charges in the case. She was scheduled to take the stand along with Corrections Secretary Jimmy LeBlanc; both were expected to testify against Cain.

Cain resigned in 2016. He pleaded guilty at the last minute, prior to Bandy and LeBlanc taking the stand, to two counts that “pertained only to purchases of gun and gun accessories, which amounted to less than $1,000,” according to Cain’s attorney, John McLindon, “Cain admitted to those limited purchases and apologized to taxpayers.”

“Even though he’s only pleaded to two counts, it wouldn’t be uncommon for the judge to consider the en- tire scheme,” Dane Ciolino, a professor at Loyola Law School, told the advocate reporter. “The odds are the judge is going to use a larger number; that’s the way it usually happens.”

GEO Group sees drastic drop in stock value

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The value of stock of one of the major operators of private prisons recently dropped 16%.

The stock decline happened after major institutions placed a moratorium on financing private detention facilities. A number of agencies have also sold-off private prison stock.

In March, JP Morgan announced “We will no longer bank the private prison industry,” reported Newsweek.

In a 2018 Business Standards Report, Wells Fargo Bank told industry analysts, “Our credit exposure to private prison companies has significantly decreased and is expected to continue to decline, [as] we are not actively marketing to that sector.”

In 2018 alone, Wells Fargo and Bank of America collectively invested $1.8 billion in the two major private prisons firms – GEO Group and CoreCivic, according to Refinitive.

The moratorium worried investors in GEO Group. They then raised questions about the reported mistreatment of detainees in their detention facilities.

The company’s annual SEC filing included a statement which read, “The management and operation of correctional, detention and community- based facilities under public- private partnerships has not achieved complete acceptance by either government agencies or the public,’ reported Asher Stockler of Newsweek.

GEO Group’s website and SEC filings reveal the company manages 75,000 beds throughout the country, creating first-quarter 2019 revenues greater than $610 million.

The company’s clients include Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service and multiple state and local agencies.

GEO and CoreCivic had California inmates in private prisons in states such as Ari- zona, Mississippi and Arkansas, besides housing state inmates in at least six facilities in California.

New contracts, such as a 10-year contract with the U.S. Marshals Service for a detention facility in Queens, N.Y., generated revenue growth of 10%, Newsweek reported.

In spite of the growth, the company is warning investors that growing public pressure to divest from the private prison industry “could have a material adverse effect on our business,” the magazine reported.

The adverse effect forecast- ed by the companies could include the loss of bank loans for basic operational and expansion costs. The companies have borrowed up to 90% of their total cash holdings, according to an article published earlier this year in the San Quentin News.

Report: Prison commissaries have legal monopoly

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lack of competition results in soaring costs for prisoners

The costs taxpayers spend to incarcerate men and women are often augmented by prisoners and their families, according to a study by Prison Policy Initiative (PPI).

For the basic necessities state prisons do not provide, prisoners must find a way to fill this deficit. Prison commissaries are one method of transference of a state’s obligation to care for prisoners. The result, more often than not, is the enrichment of private companies that provide packages to prisoners, PPI reported.

“Commissary operators have a legal monopoly,” according to PPI, “so they don’t have to worry about price competition, and thus do not incur costs associated with special sales or discounts.”

PPI analyzed commissary sales in Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington and, “We found that incarcerated people in these states spent more on commissary than our previous research suggested, and most of that money goes to food and hygiene products.”

“In Illinois and Massachusetts, incarcerated people spent an average of over $1,000 per (prisoner) at the commissary during the course of a year,” PPI report- ed. “Per-person commissary sales for the three sampled states amounted to $947, well over the typical amount incarcerated people can earn working regular prison jobs in these states ($180 to $660 per year).”

“Incarceration is becoming increasingly expensive — especially for those behind bars and their families”

“I remember when we could still get packages from home,” said Steve ‘Rhashiyd’ Zinnamon, 53, a prisoner at San Quentin State Prison, who has been incarcerated since 1995. “That was their [his family’s] way of supplementing to fill the void.”

In California, personal packages mailed from home ended sometime between 2003 and 2004.

The California Code of Regulations, Title 15 states, in part: “Inmate packages shall be ordered by inmates or their correspondents via a departmentally-approved in- mate package vendor.” There are similar provisions to purchase items on the prison commissary or canteen.

“For many people in prison, their meager earnings go right back to the prison commissary, not unlike the sharecroppers and coal miners who were forced to use the ‘company store,’” PPI re- ported.

“You got people that don’t even have a pay number (job) so they can’t even go to the store,” said inmate Eric Post, 54. He also said the price of items on canteen lists in California have increased, but inmate wages have not kept pace with inflation over the years.

According to PPI, when prisoners’ wages can’t cover the cost of canteen items, they have to turn to family members to send money to their prison trust accounts, which means “families are effectively forced to subsidize the prison system.”

Those who have no out- side support can’t afford the canteen. Some turn to prison “underground” economy and the barter system.

Inmates who arrive in California prison reception centers receive a “fish kit” that generally contains a roll of toilet paper, a four-inch tooth brush, a finger-size tube of toothpaste, a comb, a golf pencil, a small bar of soap and a single-blade razor. All food is served in prison dining halls.

“Not surprisingly, food dominates the sales reports.” PPI reported, adding “prison and jail cafeterias are notorious for serving small portions of unappealing food. Another leading problem with prison food is inadequate nutritional content.”

For a price, a prison commissary can serve as a supplement to the deficiency of calories in dining halls, but “it does not compensate for poor quality,” PPI reported. “No fresh food is available, and most commissary food items are heavily processed. Snacks and ready-to-eat food are major sellers, which is unsurprising given that many people need more food than the prison provides, and the easiest — if not only — alter- natives are ramen and candy bars.”

“The poorest people in prison, such as those consid- ered ‘indigent’ by the state, spend little to nothing at the commissary,” PPI reported.

Some California prisoners whose families can afford to make deposits on a loved one’s prison trust account refuse to do so because of the exorbitant percentage of restitution fines imposed by sentencing courts and deducted by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).

Terry Kitchen, 33, said he used to shop at the prison canteen when restitution was 22 percent. “Because restitution is so high, they’re robbing from my family,” he said.

In the last 20 years, the CDCR has raised the percentage of restitution deductions from inmate trust accounts from 22 percent to 33 percent, 44 percent, reaching its current 55 percent. And, up until a couple of months ago, inmates were charged a $5 copayment for requesting healthcare services.

“Incarceration is becoming increasingly expensive — especially for those behind bars and their families,” PPI reported. “While prisons find new ways to shift the costs of corrections to incarcerated people (think medical co-pays and pay-to-stay fees), vendors are aggressively pushing new digital products that will further monetize incarcerated people.”

The PPI study also outlined the expansive nature of other monopoly contracts given exclusively to vendors serving “a captive market.”

“You got people that don’t even have a pay number (job) so they can’t even go to the store”

“In the long term, when incarcerated people can’t afford goods and services vital to their well-being, society pays the price. In the short term, however, these costs are falling on families, who are overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately come from communities of color,” PPI concluded. “If the cost of food and soap is too much for states to bear, they should find ways to reduce the number of people in prison, rather than nickel- and-diming incarcerated people and their families.”

Prison Policy Initiative is a non-profit, non-partisan organization founded in 2001 to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society.

Louisiana prisoner denied life saving medical treatment

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Three Louisiana prisoners are suing the state, claiming inmates have been denied life-saving drugs be- cause of cost, The Advocate reports.

They contend the Hepatitis C medication is 95 per- cent effective in curing the virus, but multiple prisoners died before inmates were treated with the drug in 2016.

The drug originally cost upwards of $100,000 when approved in 2014, The Advocate reported Feb. 9. The price has since dipped to about $10,000.

“We’ve never refused medical treatment or care because of cost,” said prisons secretary Jimmy LeBlanc.

According to prison medical staff, the corrections department instituted a policy to determine which patients would get the new treatment and then administered the drugs to those most seriously ill.

The prisoners are held at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, La. They are Tony Cormier, Levell Doughty and Richard Henderson.

The suit said their 8th and 14th Amendments were violated by the corrections department for neglecting their care by failing to prescribe them the new drugs called Direct Acting Antiviral.

Joseph Long, the attorney representing the prisoners, filed a motion to request the autopsies and death reports of those who died.

“This evidence is critical to prove…the state and its actors, defendants in this case, allowed prisoners similarly situated as plaintiff to die rather than pay for the treatment that would have saved their lives,” said Long.

Hepatitis C patients in prison and on Medicaid in society, both rely on the state for their health care.

The state’s health department said of the 35,000 people in Louisiana’s Medicaid program living with hepatitis C in 2018, only 384 were treated last year. Of the additional 4,000 prisoners also living with the virus, only a small number received the medication as well, the department noted.

The three men have started treatment or are scheduled to, according to Long. He said that change came only after they filed their lawsuit.

Once facing a lifetime behind bars, some now offered a chance at freedom

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Juveniles sentenced to die in California prisons now have the chance to go home—if they can prove they have rehabilitated.

To help them achieve that goal, two attorneys are providing workshops to help juvenile offenders prepare for the Board of Parole Hearings that will determine their fate.

“(Elizabeth) Calvin and (Heidi) Rummel are working to help those still behind bars prepare for parole hearings that they never expected to have.” That is why the pair went to Corcoran in September and were at Kern Valley State Prison a few weeks earlier, The Nation reports.

“At Corcoran they met with three separate groups of inmates throughout the day. Each inmate was given the chance to speak individually with a law student and talk informally with…two other former juveniles (sentenced to life without parole (JL-WOP).”

One of those former juvenile LWOPs in attendance was Joel Aguilar, 41, who was released in December 2015. Aguilar is one of only 14 California Juvenile LWOPs who’ve been released since Senate Bill 9 was passed in 2013.

Addressing the inmates at the workshop, Aguilar said, “I know what it is to walk around that track thinking that this is where you’re going to die. You know what? It’s over. You guys are coming home.”

Although there is reason for optimism, to be actually released from prison by the parole board is not guaranteed.

“Juvenile LWOPs are at a distinct disadvantage; most are ill prepared for both parole-board hearings and life outside,” The Nation reported.

One of the main criteria by the Board to find someone suitable for parole is a demonstration of rehabilitation by participating in programs. However this is nearly impossible for most inmates serving LWOP.

“Those of us who are LWOPs are considered the worst of the worst, hopeless and beyond redemption, which is why we are not a priority in rehabilitation since we have no parole,” said Timothy L. Bludworth, LWOP inmate at Tehachapi State Prison.

“I pray something will change.”

Despite the challenges juvenile LWOPs face in obtain- ing programs for rehabilitation, change is still possible.

“My mistakes were the constant finger-pointing and blatant refusal of any responsibility for my actions,” Bludworth said.

“I’m so sorry to my victims for the pain and harm I have caused them.”

Regardless of the positive changes Juvenile LWOPs may be able to demonstrate, some victim advocates do not want them to be paroled.

One is Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, whose sister and brother-in-law and the couple’s unborn child were murdered.

For years, Bishop-Jenkins advocated against the death penalty. She said she was comfortable doing so because she knew her sister’s killer would never get out. When she learned he might one day be released she was shocked.

“I believe that there are a few very dangerous people in this world and that age has nothing to do with that dangerous aspect,” said Bishop-Jenkins, who is also leader of National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Murderers.

The Nation article noted, however, that according to a 2008 Human Rights Watch report, as many as 45 percent of California’s juvenile LWOPS had not killed anyone. Often they were tried as co-defendants with adult offenders and received longer sentences.

While the obstacles for a juvenile LWOP to be found suitable for parole are considerable, there are still things lifers can do to improve their chances.

At the mock hearing, Rummel posed several questions to be answered. What did you do? Why did you do it? How did you change? The questions are easy, she said, but the answers are not. “There were so many who…couldn’t let themselves believe that there was a chance they were going to go home,” Rummel said. “But (they) got to do this (and) start believing.” Currently there are about 300 juveniles serving life without parole in California.

Elizabeth Calvin is a senior advocate in the Children’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. Heidi Rummel is the co-director of the Post-Conviction Justice Project at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

Both women also helped to spearhead the vast majority of juvenile justice reform legislation in California over the past decade.

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