www.justiceforchandra.com

[rd]

A book review of "Life on the Outside" from the NY Times. The key here is to minimize the damage to us until we lock them up again, because they will require locking up again after doing something horrible to us. It rarely fails to be true.

rd

from www.nytimes.com (fair use)

'Life on the Outside': The Other Lockup
By BRENT STAPLES
Published: March 21, 2004

The United States is transforming itself into a nation of ex-convicts. This country imprisons people at 14 times the rate of Japan, eight times the rate of France and six times the rate of Canada. The American prison system disgorges 600,000 angry, unskilled people each year -- more than the populations of Boston, Milwaukee or Washington. ''Thirteen million people have been convicted of a felony and spent some time locked up,'' Jennifer Gonnerman writes in ''Life on the Outside.'' ''That's almost 7 percent of U.S. adult residents. If all of these people were placed on an island together, that island would have a population larger than many countries, including Sweden, Bolivia, Senegal, Greece or Somalia.''

Ex-cons are marooned in the poor inner-city neighborhoods where legitimate jobs do not exist and the enterprises that led them to prison in the first place are ever present. These men and women are further cut off from the mainstream by sanctions that are largely invisible to those of us who have never been to prison. They are commonly denied the right to vote, parental rights, drivers' licenses, student loans and residency in public housing -- the only housing that marginal, jobless people can afford. The most severe sanctions are reserved for former drug offenders, who have been treated worse than murderers since the start of the so-called war on drugs. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996, for example, imposed a lifetime ban on food stamp and welfare eligibility for people convicted of even a single drug felony. The states can opt out of the prohibition, but where it remains intact it cannot be lifted even for ex-prisoners who live model, crime-free lives.

Drug offenders, many of them former addicts, have been consigned to civic purgatory with no clear route to redemption. Gonnerman, a staff writer for The Village Voice, traces this disastrous policy back 30 years to the presidential ambitions of Nelson Rockefeller, the Republican New York governor who was denied his rightward-rushing party's presidential nomination because he was seen as too liberal. Rockefeller sought to prove his ''tough on crime'' bona fides through a widely emulated package of drug laws that has come to be his chief legacy. The legislature rejected a Rockefeller proposal that would have required a life sentence for the highest level drug felony, known as A-1, but adopted a similar sanction that set the mandatory minimum sentence at 15 to life -- which meant that hard-core judges could go higher if they chose.

A sentencing policy that had once penalized petty street-corner peddlers less severely than drug kingpins no longer considered the perpetrators' level of involvement in the trade. Now everything hinged on the weight of the drugs. A conviction for selling at least two ounces of heroin or cocaine meant A-1 -- which meant a long, long stay in jail. Under the law, two ounces were as bad as two kilos. The first-time offender who gave in to the siren song of an easy score and the junkie selling watered-down smack to feed a habit were no different under the law from the full-timer who moved serious weight.

Rockefeller reveled in the fact that he had passed the toughest drug law in the country. But as Gonnerman notes, he ''had helped launch a new experiment in crime control, one that would have repercussions in every corner of the country for decades to come.'' The states were soon competing to see who could lock up the most people for the longest periods of time. The national prison population skyrocketed, from a modest 200,000 in 1973 to an eye-popping two million today, at a cost to the country of about $55 billion per year. States were soon forced to choose between building roads and schools and building prisons.

Mass imprisonment has not hindered the drug trade. Indeed, drugs are cheaper and more plentiful today than ever. In addition, many of the addicts who are held in jail for years at a cost of more than $20,000 per inmate per year could be more cheaply and effectively dealt with in treatment. What jumps out at you from ''Life on the Outside'' is the extent to which imprisonment has been normalized, not just for adults from poor communities but for children who visit their parents in prison. Spending holidays and birthdays behind bars for years on end, these children come to think of prison as a natural next step in the process of growing up.

''Life on the Outside'' tells this story through the family of Elaine Bartlett, a young mother of four who received a sentence of 20 to life for her first offense -- selling cocaine to an undercover cop in a motel near Albany. Bartlett was pardoned after 16 years and went on to speak publicly about the evils of the Rockefeller drug laws. She rails against the unfairness of the law, but she was hardly naive when she decided to carry a package of cocaine from New York to Albany together with her boyfriend, Nathan Brooks, a petty dealer with whom she shared an apartment. Elaine had grown up in Harlem during the 60's and 70's, when the neighborhood that has become newly fashionable today was a burned-out shell and the epicenter of the heroin trade. Elaine's mother, Yvonne, had been arrested for selling heroin for pocket money and Yvonne's boyfriend had died of an overdose.

When Elaine took that train from New York to Albany, she was hoping for a quick score of $2,500, perhaps to buy some furniture and hold a nice Thanksgiving dinner for her family. She and Nathan, however, were ensnared in a buy-and-bust and hauled before one of the toughest drug judges in the state. While at trial, Elaine was startled to see the man who had lured her to Albany take the stand as a witness for the prosecution. The man was George Deets, a drug dealer and addict who ran a drug-trafficking operation while working as an informant for the state police. Deets has since died of an overdose. Even so, the story of how he maintained an intimate relationship with the state police while freely selling large amounts of drugs -- and fingering other dealers elsewhere -- merits further investigation. It also underscores a problem with how the police have operated under the Rockefeller system.

Gonnerman writes that Deets typically volunteered to serve as an informant -- which meant trawling for fresh meat in Harlem -- whenever he was arrested on a drug charge. He waltzed down to New York and lured the mark up to Albany County, making sure there was enough drug present for an A-1 bust. The mark sold the drugs to the cops, who were grateful for the collar, and Deets lived to traffic another day.

Elaine's children were 10, 6, 3 and 1 when the judge sent her to jail. The most heartbreaking scenes in ''Life on the Outside'' depict Bartlett huddled with her four young children in prison visiting rooms. The family gathered every weekend and posed for pictures taken by the visiting-room photographer. The years wear on and the children grow up before our eyes, suffering all of the problems that might be expected in young people traumatized by the absence of a beloved parent. The prison visiting rooms have become a bizarre lovers' lane where teenagers strike up relationships with people from other prison families or with inmates themselves. With each generation, the families grow steadily more accustomed to living their lives in captivity. By the time Elaine is pardoned, her mother, who has cared for the children, is dead, and the wreckage of her extended family is too much to bear. Most of this moving and well-reported book deals with Elaine's struggle to create a life for herself outside the prison walls -- by finding a job, a place to live, and by reconnecting with her thoroughly damaged family. This ground is familiar, but revelatory too, as when Elaine realizes that she has exchanged the prison behind bars for the prison that awaits ex-offenders who try to make it in the real world.

Her worst nightmare comes true when her teenage son, Jamel, who grew up in the visiting room, follows in his mother's footsteps and goes to jail himself. Jamel is visited inside by a 15-year-old girlfriend who is too young even to enter the gates but gets in with a fake ID. The girl becomes pregnant by Jamel, who has left jail briefly only to return, and the cycle begins anew.

Brent Staples writes editorials for The Times and is the author of the memoir ''Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White.''

[benn]

They are not obeying the Ten Commandments. They don't even know what the Ten Commandments are.

>>>MATTHEW 9:37
37 Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly [is] plenteous, but the labourers [are] few;
38 Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.<<<

>>>JOHN 4:34
34 Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.
35 Say not ye, There are yet four months, and [then] cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.
36 And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.
37 And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth.

benn

[benn]

Well I am not trying to stick to religion here, but looking at my last message I even mentioned the same thing when I wrote to Senator Dianne Feinstein a day or two ago. I of course mentioned this website and the Chandra Levy case, saying I hoped that California could participate more in the case.

Here is something else I am writing about now. I sent an email to Law Scope in the middle of the early morning, and i got an automated response back here, but they say they will have the real response soon.

>>>To: benf5@lanset.com
Subject: Re: A question for Law Scope about the Chandra Levy murder investigation.
From: Asklawscope@aol.com
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 16:54:11 EST

Thank you for visiting our website. Your comments and questions are very
valuable to us and we will respond to your inquiry as quickly as possible. Our
quality standard is 24 hours; however, some inquiries may take up to 2 business
days.<<<

I had read a 2002 article by them, and there was a place at the bottom of the article to ask a question. I sent a question and a statement both. My questions and statement were about my favorite subject, Chandra Levy's last days and how the Otis Thomas story got involved there.

I thought that I phrased the Otis Thomas story the best that I had ever done, showing Condit's good points, and also features of his life that seemed to be a false front, and then saying that because of all the good things that his constituents thought about him that it was very necessary for him that they never find out about his secret private life.

If I get a good answer from Law Scope I will post what I sent to them here. I thought I did a good job of explaining why Condit almost had to make Chandra disappear, because his career was in jeopardy.

We will see.

benn

[benn]

I may have gotten off subject here a little bit about people in prison. Chuck Colson used to have a lot of things to say about how prisons should be run. I think I jumped in a little too soon with my statements, and maybe I am on the wrong subject altogether in bringing up the Chandra Levy case. I was thinking of this as Latest Discussion, but that does not allow much leeway.

I can listen to audio dramatized programs at www.unshackled.org where human difficulties of any type imaginable are encountered, and people overcome them, with the help of God.

I received a form letter from a preacher yesterday, and in it he says that Christians should be improving themselves everyday. That same kind of thinking could apply to any human being on earth. We are either bettering ourselves, or we are getting worse. That does not mean becoming richer, or smarter, or more popular, or more worldly, but learning more about God each day.

This seems like too big a problem for one topic. There are many prison ministries and maybe they could be looked at to find out some solutions.

One question I see is why are prison populations in other countries smaller than in the United States? I can guess at one possible answer....life in prisons in other countries may be much more difficult than life in prisons in the United States.

I have a tract from the Foundation of Praise that shows how one man in prison was changed. This man was a very difficult prisoner. He was always getting put into the hole, which was just that a hole with a room eight foot square and 16 feet high at the bottom where a prisoner would be punished by having to stay there for up to seven days with very scanty food rations.

I won't go into all of the details and make this too long. A guard one day threw a book down to this prisoner, who was called Animal because he was so vicious. The guard hollered, "Here Animal, read this."

Since this is a hard subject, and I have already wandered off topic a little, I will get back on topic and quote some from the tract. God says in JEREMIAH 32:27 "Behold, I [am] the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?"

From the tract: "Alone, with nothing to do, the prisoner read Prison to Praise using the faint light that came between the steel bars 16 feet above him.

"Later the prisoner told me what happened. As he read the book, he mocked everything I had written. He scoffed at the idea of thanking God for things that had happpened to him."

note: 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says: "In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." (end of note).

"In derision and scorn he said, 'Okay, God, I thank you for that three foot thick cement wall....see, it's still there. Thanking you didn't do anything.'

"Item by item, the prisoner thanked God for each wall, the floor, the 16 foot high ceiling and the steel-barred door. Laughing and mocking, he continued to challenge God. 'Why don't you do something, God?' Then he thanked God for the damp coldness, the numerous cockroaches, his hunger pains and his aching bones.

The Prisoner Told Me that after exhausting his thankfulness for everything he could see, he thanked God for the guards that he hated, the prisoners who despised him, the judge who sentenced him, his worthless attorney, the witnesses who lied about him, the policemen who arrested him, the people who had kicked and beaten him when he was a boy and for his drunken abusive parents. The list of people to hate seemed endless.

"When 'The Animal' finished his list, he went back and started all over. hour aftrer hour he laughed at God and dared Him to do something, anything - as he gave mocking praise and thanksgiving.

"On The Seventh Day, the ladder was again lowered and the prisoner crawled out. The guard told me that he was totally flabbergasted when the man came through the trap door. 'The Animal' was smiling! He had never seen him smile. Even his eyes looked happy. He was a different man!

"The prisoner told me what had happened. After days of thanking God, something had occurred that defies a natural explanation. A 'man' had appeared in his cell and said, just three words, 'I love you.' He than said, 'His eyes were full of love for me, and I knew it was true.'"

That is not the end of the tract, but that is all that I am going to quote.

This tract is by Merlin R. Carothers who is also the author of Prison to Praise.

benn

[benn]

http://www.connectionmagazine.org/archives_old/2001_08/colson.htm

Here is an article by Chuck Colson. He is reporting on a book about prisons written by a secularist. I will quote a few paragraphs

by Chuck Colson
Ted Conover is a journalist who wanted to write about America's prisons. But, he didn't interview guards and inmates to get the story. He wanted the inside scoop, so he went behind bars. No, he didn't get arrested; he went on the payroll.

After a year as corrections officer, Conover wrote a book that affirms what Prison Fellowship has been proclaiming for twenty-five years. Only faith can make the difference in America's darkest places, both for the souls in prison and for the nation itself.

Conover first established himself as an adventurous journalist, doing investigative stories on illegal Mexican immigrants and the desolation of Rwanda. But none of his exotic and dangerous travels prepared him for the story he tells in his book, Newjack, about his time in the maximum-security prison, Sing Sing.

Originally built in 1828 (by the same inmates who would be imprisoned behind those forbidding stone walls), Sing Sing is one of America's most storied prisons. When French historian Alexis de Tocqueville visited there in 1831, he observed that "whilst society in the United States gives the example of the most extended liberty, the prisons in the same country offer the spectacle of the most complete despotism."

Sadly, Tocqueville's words still ring true today.

Conover discovered that not only do our prisons dehumanize offenders, they sow seeds of inhumanity in the hearts of corrections officials as well. Despite his best efforts - and even though he knew his time there was short - Conover was deeply disturbed by the experience. He became a man his wife and children did not recognize.

So, after all that time in prison, observing and interacting with violent offenders, what did Conover conclude about our penal system? In an interview with Diane Rehm on National.

First, our system is in desperate need of reform. America's growing prison population illustrates an "absurd over-reliance on incarceration." As he put it, people who can create the Internet must be able to find "better ways to treat offenders."

He's right, of course. Prison is a "blunt instrument" that doesn't suit all crimes and all offenders. The one-size jail cell truly does not fit all - which is why Prison Fellowship has pursued and supported efforts to find alternative sentencing options.

The other thing Conover saw was that only religion made a lasting difference in inmates' lives. It was the religious prisoners who were the only ones he found with hope. And that's exactly why I began Prison Fellowship twenty-five years ago.

I don't recommend this book because the language in places is offensive. But what a great apologetic it is for the Christian faith to have these kinds of conclusions from a secular journalist.(snip)

benn

[rd]

I don't trust anything a criminal says. I hope you hear something encouraging from Law Scope. You truly do describe well the impact Otis Thomas had on Chandra's last days.

rd

[benn]

I don't really know too much about what Law Scope does, except they had an old article about Chandra. They may be more interested in lawyer referrals than in keeping up with cases.

benn