The corrections world buzzed about many topics throughout 2004, including inmate education, aging prisoners, care for HIV-positive offenders, inter-agency collaborations and reentry.

As agencies focused on how to better serve their offender populations while they are incarcerated, they also looked at how to best prepare inmates for their transition back into the community.  With lowering recidivism rates in mind, agencies adjusted some of their education and healthcare practices to help ensure offenders success in the community after they are released.   Additionally, to ease the transition and provide enhanced support to offenders who are leaving correctional facilities, many corrections agencies partnered with community-based organizations.

In the second of a two-part reflection, The Corrections Connection Network News will revisit some of the issues that impacted corrections in 2004:

Reentry
Partnerships
Education
Healthcare
Special Populations
Legal Issues

Reentry

Agencies across the country, with the support of top state and federal leaders, began implementing plans to ensure that all offenders released from custody are as successful as they can be in the community.

"Everyone is looking at how do you get everyone safely back into the community," said Kermit Humphries, Project Manager for the National Institute of Corrections' Transition from Prison to Community Initiative (TCPI).

A major reentry initiative, the NIC's TPCI was created in 2001 with the assistance of 35 corrections practitioners and academics who worked together to create a reentry model for offenders. The model focuses on classifying and assessing inmates, developing and implementing transition accountability plans, releasing offenders and providing community supervision and services, among other things.   In addition, the model calls for members of the public, community and neighborhood organizations and criminal justice and human service agencies to all be stakeholders in how well the transition process works for offenders.

One of the two original jurisdictions to test the TPCI model is the Missouri Department of Corrections. In 2004, after the completion of a planning phase, the department and other reentry stakeholders in the state were poised to implement some major changes that officials hope will greatly affect recidivism.

Another effort aimed at reentry is The Prisoner Reentry State Policy Academy, a new program launched in 2003 by the National Governors' Association (NGA) specifically to help governors and other state policymakers understand the impact of reentry on their states.

"The goal is to help governors take a strategic look at what prisoner reentry looks like in their state with the goal of implementing good plans for reducing recidivism and managing this with the added goal of creating strong families, strong workforce systems, strong communities and promoting strong public safety," said Thomas MacLellan of the NGA.

With successful prisoner reentry in mind, many corrections agencies also turned to faith-based groups in 2004 to support offenders in their transition back into the community. 

President George W. Bush, who announced a focus on faith-based initiatives upon coming into office, renewed his pledge to support those efforts, and reentry, early in the year during his State of the Union address.

"This year, some 600,000 inmates will be released from prison back into society. We know from long experience that if they can't find work, or a home, or help, they are much more likely to commit crime and return to prison," Bush said in his speech. "America is the land of second chance, and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life."

In the last several years under Bush's Faith-Based and Community Initiative, grants have been made available to federal, state and local jurisdictions to provide mentors to children with incarcerated parents, for community centers to ease the reentry process and for serious and violent offender reentry strategies.

The Ready for Work program is just one of many faith-based initiatives that has touched the lives of offenders and ex-offenders.  A joint effort by Consulting Services for Faith Based and Community Solutions and the Department of Labor, the program specifically targets ex-offenders and links them to the workforce system and employers with the help of the faith-based community.  It engages volunteers from congregations in target communities to mentor offenders specifically for obtaining and retaining jobs.

Another faith-based initiative, The Transition of Prisoners (TOP) program, was established by Prison Fellowship Ministries in 1993 as an aftercare program for prisoners within six months of release from the Michigan Department of Corrections into the Detroit area.

A similar program focuses on the children of offenders in the Philadelphia area.  The Amachi program began in 2000 and connects kids whose parents are incarcerated with mentors from congregations in the community to help provide support they might need in their parents' absence.

Partnerships

Supporting the children of offenders was also a goal of some community and government partnerships in 2004. Many agencies across the country formed partnerships to change the experiences of these children and decrease the likelihood that they will become involved in the criminal justice system by offering support on multiple levels.

Through a federal grant from the National Institute of Corrections, the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) created a resource center to provide technical assistance, training and guidance to member agencies and others about how to best serve the children of offenders.   Additionally, the CWLA worked with several agencies to support research, activities and programming for children with incarcerated parents.

One of the basic ways that agencies try to strengthen the parent-child bond is through visitation programs designed especially for the children.  These visitation programs are often run with the help of community partners.

Friends Outside is a nationally based program that works with the children of prisoners. In San Luis Obispo County, Calif., the California Department of Corrections (CDC) has partnered with the organization to work with these children during visits with their incarcerated parents.

Another program in New York aims to make reentry a holistic experience from the family point of view.  There, the non-profit Family Justice Inc. has partnered with the New York State Division of Parole to create the Bodega de la Familia program, which teams parole officers with the families of offenders to change community supervision so it better serves the offender and the family as a whole.

While partnerships exist in corrections to aid offenders in their reentry and to support their families, corrections and public health agencies are also forming alliances to keep offenders and communities healthier.

The corrections and public health fields have intersected more frequently in recent years as closer attention has been paid to the healthcare that inmates need after release. In 2001, the Centers for Disease Control funded several demonstration projects across the country to promote public health and corrections collaborations and a report to Congress last year on the health status of soon-to-be-released inmates also highlighted the issue in a broader context.

The necessity to treat offenders who have HIV has driven improvements in the health care services offenders receive on the inside and after they are released, said John Miles of McKing Consulting Corp. and Executive Director for Programs for the American Correctional Health Services Association.  It has also led to partnerships.

One community group that took this issue and ran with it is the AIDS Foundation Houston. According to Miles, the group developed a peer education program after participating in forums to highlight offender needs upon release from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

In New York, HIV treatment has also been a focus of corrections and public health collaborations.  In New York, the state Department of Health AIDS Institute staff meets with New York State Department of Correctional Services health care staff quarterly to discuss clinical care guidelines for HIV and other diseases.

The New York State Department of Correctional Services has also created a successful TB registry that is shared across systems.  NYSDOCS Medical Director Lester Wright said that TB rates have gone down significantly in the last decade because of collaborations like this.

Beyond HIV and TB, agencies across the country, like the Georgia Department of Corrections, are striving to make a difference for inmates with health problems as they are released into the community.  There, the DOC has offered transitional services to offenders with mental health problems or developmental disabilities through a program called TAPP (Transitional Aftercare for Probationers and Parolees).

Bill Kissell, Health Director for the Georgia DOC, said that the program connects probationers and parolees with caseworkers who set up residential services, appointments for treatment and vocational programs for offenders. They work closely with the probation/parole officer to ensure the offender's needs are met for six months after release.

With partnerships in existence to promote better healthcare for inmates and safer communities, corrections agencies have also been collaborating with other organizations for another important purpose: to help rehabilitate offenders.  Partnerships with this purpose can take many forms, but it is those programs that concentrate on inmate reentry that have garnered recent attention.

"They [partnerships] are in a variety of areas. [But] there's no question that reentry has been the impetus for a whole series of collaboratives that didn't happen before," said A.T. Wall, Director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections.

According to Reginald Wilkinson, Director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, these new partnerships are a strong sign that the prevailing philosophy in corrections is shifting from a lock-the-door attitude to one that truly recognizes the importance of rehabilitation.

In Washington State, corrections facilities have focused on partnerships with the community that promote restorative justice practices to help offenders be accountable for their crimes and simultaneously build relationships in the community.

According to Tami Kampbell, Community Partnerships Program Coordinator for the DOC, each of the regional corrections offices hired community victim liaisons to help the DOC link with the victim community.

Like the Washington DOC, the Minnesota DOC has realized that partnerships are vital to offender rehabilitation.

Minnesota's Project SOAR (Safety Offender Accountability and Restoration) started as a grant opportunity through the federal Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative grant program.   According to David Ellis, Program Director for SOAR, the state DOC is the lead agency in the partnership with the Hennepin County Training and Employee Assistance program and several other agencies in the community.  Ellis said this broad-based partnership is important because eventually offenders will be living in these communities without support from the DOC or other assistance programs.

While partnerships are important to aid agencies and offenders at the state level, they are equally important locally.  Through community partnerships, jails are providing offenders with meaningful connections to increase their chances of success after release.

In Orange County, Florida, for example, corrections officials recently received funds from a joint Council of State Governments/NIC project to provide technical assistance for programs serving offenders with mental health problems.

Jill Hobbs, Manager of Community Corrections for the Orange County Corrections Department, said that the department, with its new technical assistance funding, will try to better map existing mental health services in the jail to the services in the community.

In Suffolk County, Mass., the Sheriff's Department, along with other partners in the Boston community, was the recent recipient of a federal Department of Education (DOE) grant that will allow for the development of a program focusing on life skills and other training for female offenders.

Community Reentry for Women (CREW) program will operate on a case management model that will help the offenders make connections for after release. The medical and mental health services will be coordinated by the discharge planner from the community health center, said Mary Ellen Mastrorilli, Superintendent of Community Corrections for the Sheriff's Department.

While programs like CREW aim to educate and prepare female offenders for life in the community, a variety of other educational programs in corrections strive to prepare both male and female offenders for employment when they are released from a correctional facility.

Education

Corrections officials across the country recognize that the inability to find employment is a great barrier to offenders who are reintegrating into society.  In 2004, corrections agencies continued to try to do more to help offenders find their path and be prepared to join the community in a constructive way.

Shelly Morelock of the National Institute of Corrections' Office of Correctional Job Training and Placement (OCJTP) said that the OCJTP has been working hard to promote the idea that offenders need more than a job, they need to understand their aptitudes, their skills and their interests if they hope to maintain a crime-free lifestyle.

To further this effort, the OCJTP released a new curriculum in July on career planning for offenders.  According to Morelock, corrections agencies in Ohio, Kansas and Iowa are using OCJTP curriculum to train staff in an effort to improve their agencies' connections with workforce development programs in the community.

Industries programs, too are changing gears a bit to help prepare offenders for employment after they are released from incarceration.  According to Carol Martindale-Taylor of the National Correctional Industries Association (NCIA), industries program leaders realize that job training on the inside needs to be applicable to successful employment on the outside.

As an agency, the NCIA has created a reentry task force that brings together correctional industries leaders to discuss how their programs can interface with larger reentry efforts.

Studies like The Urban Institute's Baltimore Prisoners' Experience Returning Home also highlighted the importance of education in reentry efforts in 2004.  It found that most offenders are in great need of educational programs as well as programs that help them find a job after release and help them stay straight and sober to keep one.

According to Christy Visher, Principal Investigator for the Returning Home study and a Principal Research Associate for the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center, it follows that agencies should offer offenders work skills programming and the opportunity to participate in work-release programs that mirror the needs of the marketplace outside.

In the study, the offenders surveyed also said that the most important aspect of finding employment was the connection they had to family and friends.

While studies like Returning Home detail what types of educational efforts prisoners need to successfully transition back into the community, corrections agencies often face obstacles, like tight budgets and security concerns, in trying to provide inmates with the programming that will serve them best.

As correctional educators work under budget cuts, they have had to make some changes. One way that agencies have tweaked educational programs is by pairing them with reentry efforts. 

"We need to look at it from a holistic point of view. Education, while demonstrating reduced recidivism, can also be partners with other programs and those can support a broader variety of programs that work together to improve an inmate's chance of being successful after release. And, 95 percent will get released," said Carl Nink, Executive Director of MTC Institute, the research arm of Management & Training Corporation, which studies and reviews best practices related to inmate employment and education.

In Ohio, the Ohio Central School System, which provides education to the state's inmates, has been working to change the orientation of educational programming to support reentry efforts.  There, they are beginning the system's pre-release program sooner so that it starts at intake.  The system has also contracted with three learning centers in the community to provide education to parolees and probationers. 

Also in Ohio, the Central School system has provided a distance learning network for offenders since 1999. After piloting the program in one institution, it has expanded today to 10 prisons in the correctional system.  Corrections agencies hope that new types of programming, like distance learning, will improve offender outcomes after release and help agencies to provide educational programming to prisoners they would not have previously been able to reach - like those in maximum security.

While education for adult offenders is important to their success when they are released from incarceration, educational efforts aimed at juveniles are equally important in corrections.

But states are all over the map when it comes to who is responsible for providing the education of detained youth, who pays for the education of this population and who makes decisions for the system. That makes it more difficult for juvenile education issues to have a national platform and maybe also for the youth to garner any attention at all.

According to Bruce Wolford, Director of the Training Resource Center at Eastern Kentucky University, who has authored several studies on juvenile justice education, although juvenile justice systems differ in the way they are set up, all should have one consistent element: multi-agency collaboration among the three systems youth tend to move between, the juvenile justice system, the mental health system and the child welfare system.

In Kentucky, Wolford said, these three systems fall under one category for state funding, which allows for a comprehensive approach to the care of these youth.

That same kind of approach is also being put into practice in the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) after several years of federal oversight due to a consent decree to raise the quality of services provided to juveniles, including the educational program.  In early 2004, the educational portion of that order was released from oversight as the department took a new approach to teaching this population.

Now in Georgia, the DJJ has created a consistent curriculum of instruction that will ensure that when these youth are under the agency's care, they do not fall further behind academically. 

Healthcare

Aside from an emphasis on offender education, corrections officials also focused on inmate healthcare in 2004.

The "AIDS 2004" conference, held in Bangkok, Thailand, in July addressed the issue of HIV prevalence within prison populations, which is much higher than in the general population both in the United States and worldwide.

Two major oral sessions on HIV/AIDS in prisons included presentations from prison officials from Indonesia, Thailand and Iran, as well as a presentation on the first comprehensive survey of prison-based needle exchange programs.  Barry Zack from California presented about the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as partners of prison systems in the fight against HIV/AIDS and Richard Wolitski discussed "Project START," which is funded by CDC to develop an HIV, STD, and hepatitis prevention program for young men who are leaving prison.

A final important development at "AIDS 2004" was the release of a policy brief on reduction of HIV transmission in prisons by three United Nations agencies (the World Health Organization, UNAIDS, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime).  The document calls upon governments to step up HIV prevention measures in prisons by adopting comprehensive programs that include all the measures against HIV transmission that are carried out in the community, including needle exchange.

At another conference, HIV in Corrections, held in Massachusetts in October, corrections practitioners and health officials gathered to discuss care for HIV-positive offenders as it relates to the growing emphasis on reentry in corrections.

In Suffolk County, Mass., where offenders are either held short-term at the Nashua Street Jail or sentenced to the Suffolk County House of Correction, programs for HIV-positive offenders have expanded. In the House of Correction, both offenders and staff receive education about HIV, and inmates receive counseling, transitional planning and referrals as they near release. Services have also expanded in the jail, which traditionally is a more difficult setting to reach sick offenders to help them change their behavior.

In addition to what corrections agencies are doing, some long-standing community advocacy programs have implemented new approaches to serving HIV-positive offenders and enhance their chances for success.

At SPAN Inc., a non-profit offender advocacy organization in Massachusetts, the group works with offenders and ex-offenders to provide health education, education, release planning, substance abuse counseling, case management for reintegration as well as transitional housing and resource centers in the community.

While HIV continued to be a hot topic in 2004, so, too did mental health. 
Many experts in the field believe that it takes a total community response to the population to adequately serve individuals with mental health problems.

According to Jeffrey Metzner, a forensic psychiatrist with the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, an author on correctional psychiatry and a contributor to several NCCHC health guidelines and publications, good screening at intake is the first step for corrections agencies.  Also, for those inmates with mental health problems who do live among the general population, staff need to be aware of the behaviors that might lead these offenders toward disciplinary reports.  Beyond this, corrections agencies need to also work together with the community to ensure that when these offenders are released from incarceration they have access to adequate services so that they remain out of trouble and, ultimately, out of the criminal justice system.

In 2004, NCCHC created new guidelines to help agencies that wish to improve their mental health services.  The NCCHC's guidelines for the Treatment of Schizophrenia in Correctional Institutions were released to help agencies understand the recommended goals for treatment and how to accomplish them.

Beyond mental health problems, many offenders also have substance abuse problems, forcing corrections agencies to find a way to treat inmates with co-occurring disorders. 

According to Oscar Morgan, NMHA chief operating officer and former Commissioner of Mental Health for the state of Maryland, the best possible option is to prevent this group of individuals from going into an incarcerated setting in the first place.  They need treatment, he said.  But for those offenders with co-occurring disorders who do require incarceration, Morgan suggests, if a correctional institution has the means, it should create some form of collaboration with the local health department so that assistance can be provided to this population after release.

Stanley Sacks of the Co-Occurring Center for Excellence at the recent Behavioral Health in Corrections Conference in Rhode Island agrees.  He believes that that therapeutic community interventions in the correctional setting combined with community aftercare efforts are the way to go.

Sharing information among agencies about what works in treating this population is important, Sacks added.  With this in mind, the GAINS Center for Co-Occurring Disorders is now focusing on highlighting evidence-based practices that are working in the criminal justice system.

With a new mission and a federal grant to run the Center for Evidence-based Programs for People in the Justice System, the hope is that model programs will be highlighted and replicated in jurisdictions across the country.

Special Populations

Treating offenders with mental health problems can be challenge for any adult corrections agency.  But juvenile justice agencies face the issue, too, as they are receiving youth with serious mental health problems that require treatment and observation.

"It's not the function of juvenile justice to be mental health and psychiatric centers, but their feeling is they are stuck. They have the kids right now. It's being sold as the place to go. There's no alternative. [And] all over the country people are coming in and finding horrible circumstances for the kids of our country," said Joseph Cocozza, Director of the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice.

A recent NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) study found that families were increasingly turning to juvenile justice centers or facilities for mental health services for youth because there were no alternatives in the community.

And a June 2004 ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, J.M.K. v. Luzerne County Juvenile Detention Center et al., indicated that a juvenile justice facility has the obligation to screen youth who come through the door for potential mental health problems and to provide services and monitoring when needed.

Because of rulings like these, many agencies are using nationally recognized assessment instruments to discover whether there are mental health problems in the juvenile population and those tools are becoming more adept at flagging serious problems.

One well-known assessment instrument, the MAYSI, has recently undergone a revision and agencies are able to access technical assistance to implement it. Another, computer-based assessment tool, the Voice DISC (Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children), has also been tested in several states and can complement the MAYSI.

States, like Arizona, are currently using these instruments.  But, in 2005, to more accurately target services to juveniles who need them, the Department of Juvenile Corrections (ADJC) plans to improve its screening and assessment methods.

While states are making some changes to improve the mental health services juveniles receive, lawmakers at the federal level are taking notice of the issue as well.

According to a Congressional report released in August, which was commissioned by House Government Reform Committee member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), two-thirds of juvenile detention facilities in 47 states hold youth who are waiting for mental health services in the community.

Reports such as these, combined with funding for diversion programs from such government agencies as SAMSHA and OJJDP, indicate that there is a growing understanding of the scope of the problem and that it goes well beyond the juvenile justice system.

While corrections agencies face unique challenges in dealing with juvenile populations, especially those with mental health problems, aging offenders also have different needs, which corrections departments are required to meet.

Even though the total percentage of elderly offenders nationally is 4.3 percent, this group represents a much more significant health care cost to agencies and requires special supervision to ensure they are not subjected to cruel and unusual punishment -- the legal bar for many corrections-related lawsuits.

To address these issues, many corrections agencies have built prison nursing home facilities with specially trained staff and services for this population. Other agencies have opted for special units or wings for aging offenders in existing facilities in order to provide more specialized care.

But the various needs of the elderly are forcing some states to go beyond creating special units for older offenders.  The Virginia legislature, for example, passed a geriatric parole provision three years ago for the state parole board to use to release certain older inmates who would not be a risk to the public.

In Maryland, too, aging offenders are on the Division of Corrections' Social Work Department's radar screen.  According to Dot Strawsburg, Director of Social Work, a database of older offenders is maintained and watched closely to ensure that inmates receive regular physical and mental exams.  And a relatively new mechanism for monitoring geriatric offenders' needs is the agency's Palliative Care Committee, which was formed in 2003.

The idea behind the formation of the committee, according to Jennifer Sears, Director of the Palliative Care Committee for the Baltimore region, was to work together inter-departmentally to share information and expedite the process for medical parole (sentenced inmates) and compassionate release (pre-trial detainees). 

While corrections agencies are focusing on elderly inmates, they have begun, also, to shift their attention to the victims of crimes and providing services to them.

The National Institute of Corrections (NIC) issued a survey in January 2004 to assess the nature and status of victim-related services sponsored by state departments of correction.  NIC mailed a written survey instrument to DOCs in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. territories and protectorates, selected large municipal governments, and the federal governments of the U.S. and Canada.

The study shows that most state-level corrections systems in the U.S. are providing at least basic services to assist victims of crime. It also shares ideas about effective programs and about agencies' current needs as they continue to develop or expand their services related to crime victim issues.

Legal Issues

In 2004, a variety of legal issues, ranging from sentencing to the death penalty, also impacted corrections. 

Prison Rape
The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which was passed into law in 2003, put the issue of prison rape on the front burner.

The act, which calls for a range of measures including an evaluation of the prison rape problem as well as the development of national standards for corrections, will ultimately change the way prison rape is prevented, recorded and dealt with.

In early 2005, the first round of surveys will be going out to prisoners in adult, juvenile and jail facilities and former inmates to determine the prevalence of sexual assault among this incarcerated population.  The surveys will ask offenders about several categories of sexual assault including completed non-consensual sexual acts, attempted non-consensual sexual acts and abusive sexual contacts. In addition, the survey will distinguish between sexual acts involving other inmates and sexual acts involving staff.

As part of the funding associated with the implementation of PREA, the National Institute of Corrections was awarded a contract to establish training on this subject, as well.  The Moss Group, headed by Andie Moss, will create this training as part of a cooperative agreement. Already NIC has held videoconferences on PREA and additional training opportunities will be available as well.

In both Michigan and Louisiana, efforts are being made to address the issue of inmate rape and sexual assault.  With grant money from the Bureau of Justice Assistance in conjunction with PREA, the Michigan DOC will look to include in its training curriculum for medical and mental health staff and investigators information about vulnerable offenders and sexual predators.  It also plans to revise its assessment screening tools to better target potential victims and predators.

Like the Michigan DOC, the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections received a PREA grant to put toward protecting inmates behind prison walls and improving safety in communities. 

Although there is some training and education about prison rape already taking place in Louisiana's correctional facilities, DPS&C Undersecretary Trey Boudreaux said the agency plans to use this funding to add to current initiatives.

Sentencing
Prison rape isn't the only legal issue that affected corrections in 2004; sentencing was also a topic of interest.  As voters in California nearly toppled the state's three strikes law in November, Supreme Court justices are poised to make some lasting changes to federal and, possibly, state sentencing.

"The country is flirting with criminal justice reforms. People haven't taken a real dive [into this] because prison populations went up in the last year, but 25 to 30 states have passed laws to modify mandatories, get people to treatment, shorten sentences. There's a lot of people experimenting," said Vincent Schiraldi, Executive Director of the Justice Policy Institute, a non-profit research group that follows criminal justice trends.

A recent decision by the Supreme Court in the case Blakely v. Washington may help move sentencing reform along even further.  The court, which ruled in June, stated that when a law establishes a maximum sentence for a crime, an offender's constitutional right to a jury prohibits a judge from imposing a longer sentence if that decision is based on the judge's determination of additional aggravating facts.

At the federal level, two new cases before the Supreme Court, U.S. v. Booker and U.S. v. Fanfan, presented questions about federal sentencing guidelines. Both cases involve sentences for drug crimes with one decision handed down before and one after Blakely. In both cases, the high court must determine whether Blakely applies to federal sentencing guidelines.

According to Marc Mauer, Assistant Director for The Sentencing Project, a non-profit organization that advocates for sentencing reform, judges in the federal court system have taken a mixed approach to Blakely. Some have continued to follow sentencing guidelines without change and others have stated that the federal guidelines are unconstitutional and thus, have interpreted their own sentencing.

If the Supreme Court makes the decision to uphold Blakely in reference to federal guidelines, then, Mauer predicts, Congress will be brought into the picture to alter the federal guidelines to fit the court's ruling.

Segregration
The Supreme Court considered other issues in late 2004 affecting corrections, too.  In November, the justices heard oral arguments in the case Johnson v. California, which involves a complaint filed by California inmate Garrison Johnson who had been segregated according to his race at reception and then five additional times when he was transferred to other institutions within the state.

Johnson as well as the ACLU contend that the CDC's policy is unlawful and should be deemed as such by applying the "strict scrutiny" standard that the Supreme Court has set forth in previous cases to evaluate state imposed segregation. The court has held that all intentional state racial segregation is subject to strict scrutiny when challenged under the Fourteenth Amendment.

But, according to Margo Bach, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections, the segregation is done for the safety of the inmates, the staff and the facility and is not intended to discriminate against any person.

Death Penalty
Each year, an abundance of death penalty cases rise to the Supreme Court level, but only a few are taken on by the justices. Through cases in 2004, the court has made a point to clarify the procedures that are required for death sentences and may soon provide a ruling that could change the application of a death penalty sentence for juveniles.

In the court's most recent death penalty decision, the justices made clear to Texas courts in particular that a jury must give "full consideration and full effect" to mitigating circumstances in choosing the death sentence. In this case, Smith v. Texas, the judge had only instructed the jury to consider the deliberateness of the defendant's actions and whether he posed a continuing danger to others.

Another Texas case on the Supreme Court's docket this term, Miller-El v. Dretke,  involves a claim by a petitioner that his constitutional rights had been violated in his death penalty case because African-Americans were excluded from the jury. The Supreme Court originally heard the case last year and remanded it to the circuit court to consider the jury selection claim.

This year, the case is back after the circuit court again ruled against the petitioner finding that he did not present clear and convincing evidence that the state court had erred by not finding "purposeful discrimination" in the exclusion of African-American jury members.

According to Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, the second time around, the high court will have a chance to review the discrimination claim.

Another case that also touches upon jury issues in death penalty cases is Brown v. Payton.   In November, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in this California case, which raises the question of whether the jury considering the death penalty was incorrectly told that the offender's religious conversion after the crime was irrelevant.
For those watching these rulings and cases closely, many believe that the outcomes may serve to strictly tailor the application of the death penalty and put courts on notice that all aspects of the case need to be handled carefully.

The juvenile death penalty has also been in the limelight in 2004.  In the case Roper v. Simmons, the state of Missouri hopes to convince the Supreme Court to let the decision of whether or not to sentence 16 and 17 year-olds to death be up to the states. The case comes to the court just as new research has been released this fall showing that juvenile death sentences, like adult death sentences, have declined significantly.

In 2005, decisions are expected from the Supreme Court in many of these cases.  We can also anticipate that new legal issues will emerge in corrections in the coming year, accompanied by new trends in inmate education, improved healthcare practices and expanded reentry efforts.  The Corrections Connection Network News will continue to follow these developments in the corrections field and report on corrections as it evolves in 2005.

Resources:
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