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www.prisonlegalnews.org Prison Legal News Online! ➤ ➤ PLN’s website offers all issues of PLN in both a searchable database and PDF format. Issues are indexed and posted as soon as they go to press! ➤ Full text decisions of thousands of court cases, published and unpublished! ➤ Most complete collection of prison and jail related verdicts and settlements anywhere! ➤ Brief bank with a wide assortment of winning motions, briefs, complaints and settlements! ➤ Thousands of articles and cases, all fully indexed by more than 500 subjects, searchable by case name, case year, state of origin, court, author, location, case outcome, PLN issue and key word search. Visitors can search the site’s content for free, pay only if we have what you are looking for! ➤ Our Publications section has downloadable versions of numerous government reports, audits and investigations from around the country! ➤ All content is easy to print for downloading and mailing to prisoners! ➤ Order books, print subscriptions and make donations on line! ➤ Links to thousands of other prison, jail, criminal justice and legal websites around the world! ➤ This is the highest quality and most comprehensive prison litigation news and research site in the world! New content added daily! If you need to know about prisons and jails or are litigating a detention facility case you can’t afford not to subscribe to our website! Online subscribers get unlimited, 24 hour a day access to the website and its content! Low, affordable subscription rates to meet your needs and budget: ➤ $9.95 per month ➤ $69.95 per year You can’t afford not to subscribe! www.prisonlegalnews.org Sign up for PLN’s FREE listserve to receive prison and jail news and court rulings by e-mail. April 2008 2 Prison Legal News
PUBLISHER Rollin Wright EDITOR Paul Wright ASSOCIATE EDITOR Alex Friedmann EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Donald W. Miniken Jr. COLUMNISTS Mumia Abu Jamal, Denise Johnston, Daniel E. Manville, Kent Russell CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Matthew Clarke, John Dannenberg, Gary Hunter, David Reutter, Mike Rigby, Sam Rutherford, Roger Smith, Silja J.A. Talvi, Bob Williams & Mark Wilson LAYOUT Lance Scott/Catalytic Communications PLN is a Monthly Publication A one year subscription is $18 for prisoners, $25 for individuals, and $60 for lawyers and institutions. Prisoner donations of less than $18 will be pro-rated at $1.50/issue. Do not send less than $9.00 at a time. All foreign subscriptions are $60 sent via airmail. PLN accepts Visa and Mastercard orders by phone. New subscribers please allow four to six weeks for the delivery of your first issue. Confirmation of receipt of donations cannot be made without an SASE. PLN is a section 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization. Donations are tax deductible. Send contributions to: Prison Legal News 2400 NW 80th Street #148 Seattle WA 98117 (206) 246-1022 Fax (206) 248-6846 info@prisonlegalnews.org www.prisonlegalnews.org Please do not mail PLN paperwork for an ongoing case or request legal advice. PLN is not a legal service provider and cannot give legal advice. PLN reports on legal cases and news stories related to prisoner rights and prison conditions of confinement. PLN welcomes all news clippings, legal summaries and leads on people to contact related to those issues. Article submissions should be sent to - The Editor - at the above address. We cannot return submissions without a SASE. Check our website or send a SASE for writers guidelines. PLN is indexed by the Alternative Press Index, Criminal Justice Periodicals Index and the Department of Justice Index. Prison Legal News Cost Shifting (cont.) to pay the unauthorized jail fees. Though unauthorized in Clinch County, some argue that shifting costs in this way makes sense. After all, they say, those arrested, charged, and prosecuted are responsible for the ballooning costs of jails, courts, prison, and community supervision. “In essence, an inmate is being asked to reimburse the State because the inmate ‘has made it necessary for the State to keep and maintain him at a large cost,’” the Supreme Court of Washington explained in a 2001 case challenging automatic deductions from inmate accounts to cover costs. 17 While the notion of charging “users” for the systems’ cost may have some appeal, it ignores critically important policy and practical realities. Powerful interests profit directly from keeping our jails and prisons full -- private prison investors, prison guard unions, telephone companies, and industries that service detention facilities (like medical, transportation and food service) – all gain directly from keeping prisons in business. As imprisonment systems grow, however, so does the burden on taxpayers who fund them. Why, disgruntled taxpayers might ask, are policymakers not finding less expensive and more effective ways to keep the public safe? Why, taxpayers might wonder, won’t policymakers devise alternatives to jails and prisons that solve the underlying problems contributing to involvement in the system instead of exacerbate them? Rather than answer these important questions, increasingly jurisdictions now seek to quell taxpayer concern about system costs by shifting those costs away from taxpayers and on to the “bad guys” who use the system. By shifting costs in this way officials are essentially immunizing themselves from tax payer complaints, in essence muzzling the calls for change and demands to develop more cost effective alternatives to criminalization and incarceration. The resulting status quo most greatly benefits a limited, yet influential few – those who profit from full jails and prisons. Concern over shielding “hardworking tax payers” from the costs of getting the “bad guy” figures prominently in costshifting rationales. Yet the distinction between “taxpayers” and “bad guys” may be an illusory one. Someone may be holding down a tax-paying job one day and behind bars the next. And, where 3 compelled to pay book-in fees or a per diem for room and board in pre-trial detention, one is paying fees before being convicted of any offense. Probationers, for whom employment is often a condition of release, pay taxes but are still charged fees for probation services. Family members – who pay into commissary or personal accounts for a detained or incarcerated loved one, only to have those dollars intercepted by prison and jail officials to cover prisoner room and board – are often tax payers. Ora Lee Hurley’s situation offers an illustrative example of the hazy divide between “bad guy” and “taxpayer” and the counterproductive cycle fee assessments create. Hurley is a prisoner held at the Gateway Diversion Center in Atlanta because she owes a $705 fine. As part of the diversion program, Hurley was permitted to work during the day and return to the Center at night. Five days a week she works full-time at a restaurant, earning $6.50 an hour and, after taxes, nets about $700 a month. Room and board at the diversion center is $600, her monthly transportation costs $52, and miscellaneous other expenses eat up what’s left. Hurley’s attorney explains “[t] his is a situation where if this woman was able to write a check for the amount of the fine, she would be out of there. And because she can’t, she’s still in custody. It’s as simple as that.” Though she works while in custody, most of her income goes to repay her diversion program, not the underlying fine that landed her there in the first place. 18 In addition to allowing them to limit the public’s financial burden caused by wrongdoers, 19 policymakers and justice administrators argue that imposing cost-covering fees allows them: to avoid raising taxes; 20 to ensure crime victims are properly compensated; 21 to appear fiscally responsible; 22 and to teach moral lessons, 23 and fiscal responsibility. 24 These goals, however, remain elusive. Court-imposed debt is usually layered on to other disadvantages. According to a 1997 survey of state prisoners conducted by the Department of Justice, “68 percent of people in prison had not completed high school,53 percent earned less than $1,000 in the month prior to their incarceration, and nearly one half were either unemployed or working only part-time prior to their arrest.” 25 A 2006 report by the New York State Bar Association found it “fair to conclude that about 80% of all defendants April 2008
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Page 7 and 8: into their spouses’ prison accoun
Page 9 and 10: for violating her probation. 98 Byr
Page 11 and 12: cating Order to Pay Costs, State v.
Page 13 and 14: savings account; and (iii) Twenty p
Page 15 and 16: land in trouble with guards. Placem
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Page 19 and 20: gain some fleeting freedom. On Sept
Page 21 and 22: space,” said Lantz, who maintaine
Page 23 and 24: on the toilet, and he just looked a
Page 25 and 26: Prison Legal News Pennsylvania Life
Page 27 and 28: Federation of Government Employees
Page 29 and 30: Jail Uprisings in Oklahoma and Arka
Page 31 and 32: ally violent predator, was paroled
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Page 35 and 36: the CCPOA; and the federally-appoin
Page 37 and 38: said. This is the seventh 100 cell
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Page 41 and 42: Iowa Prisons Fined $92,000 For Pris
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Page 47 and 48: Prison Legal News 47 April 2008

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