abelle
11-29-2005, 04:32 AM
I posted this in the WA forum but here it may be more appropriate.
http://seattlemedium.com/News/article/article.asp?NewsID=62463&sID=4
Inmates Get Chance To Publicly Express The Need For Prisons To Focus On Rehabilitation
by David Bash
Special To The Seattle Medium
Originally posted 10/12/2005
Black prisoners at Monroe Penitentiary got a self-made opportunity Saturday to address high-ranking government, community representatives and grassroots folks and to make a televised plea for a chance at “rehabilitation.”
Organized under their Black Prisoners Coalition (BPC), mostly long-term convicts who have become political activists, they group addressed Senator Adam Kline (D – 37th District); Representative Eric Pettigrew (D – 37th District); King County Councilman Larry Gossett; Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos’ aide; Seattle School Board director Brita Butler-Wall; Ken Quinn, the newly appointed African American superintendent of the prison; and about thirty additional people, many representing a diverse group of organizations, and churches at their Community Reform Summit.
Last year, Sen. Kline sponsored a bill to address the racial disproportionality of the application of the three strikes law showing that it unfairly impacted communities of color and was fiscally irresponsible quoting statistics showing how the three strikes law would end up spending huge amounts of money warehousing and caring for a less-dangerous and aged prison population. He also pushed a bill to eliminate the weapon-less 2nd degree robbery crime from being a strike. Both bills failed. But at last year’s BPC summit Kline said he was so impressed by the brother’s presentations that he would use his authority to have the next one televised on the governments TVW television network - which he’s has now done and will air on Weds. Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. on TVW.
“I was…blown away by the speakers who destroyed the stereotypes of prisoners. Sometimes it affects you in the heart how you thought things that you really believed you didn’t think,” Kline admitted, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a member of the Sentencing Guidelines Commission.
“We don’t talk about [the issue of] rehabilitation, said Kline. “I wish I could convince the majority of my legislative colleagues to help you out.”
Later in the presentation, inmate Patrick Bolt, who is White, presented statistics supporting Kline’s statements, claiming that the Monroe prison used to have twenty teachers in the GED and vocational training programs there but currently employs only two. In addition, he showed data from a three-state recidivism study showing as much as a thirty percent decline in re-incarcerations rates of inmates who took vocational training courses or improved their academic education in prison. Bolt also noted that the average age of a state inmate is 18-25, without a high school education, and that prison inmates at Monroe under 22 years of age without a high school diploma or GED are required to attend educational classes that are provided by Edmonds Community College.
Current data presented in state judiciary committee meetings show that for every $1 spent on education in prisons there is a $2 rate of return to the state in taxes and saved cell space and Bolt’s three-state study showed a $3.23 rate of return for inmate vocational training programs.
Rep. Eric Pettigrew told the inmates he loved them and that he was extremely impressed by their last presentation.
“I’ve seen some of the best presentations from the White House and major corporations. I saw the best presentation here,” said Pettigrew.
“I feel a sense of pride and pain that you [prisoners] can’t be in the community to hone your skills,” he added. “We’re working hard to make your bed ready for you to come back [to the community].”
King County Councilman Larry Gossett said that twenty-five percent of the world’s prison population is in the United States and that “500,000 Black men, not counting women, are in jail for drug-related crimes.” Gossett also stated that “pick-pocketing is a three-strikes crime” that can send you away for life in this state. But, “Just speaking truth to power does not necessarily change anything,” he said.
Of the panel of ten inmates, comprised mainly of three-strike lifers, making presentations at the community reform summit, Eric Smiley and Antonio Wheat are two of the most infamous. Smiley was convicted of killing a Black Seattle police officer in 1997, a crime which Smiley to this day he denies committing; and Wheat -- when he was an airman stationed at Paine Field near Everett in 1965 -- was convicted for the killing of three Seattle service station attendants during a string of robberies and was condemned to hang but later had that sentence changed to life imprisonment.
On a positive note for David (Dawud Malik) Riggins, he recently had his life sentence – of which he has served 40 years and which under the old independent sentencing review board (ISRB) guidelines would have had him released 20 years ago – commuted and will be released from prison soon. He asked Representative Pettigrew to personally ask legislators to readdress the newer Sentencing Review Board’s decisions on the older ISRB-system inmates like himself “who have already done their time.”
http://seattlemedium.com/News/article/article.asp?NewsID=62463&sID=4
Inmates Get Chance To Publicly Express The Need For Prisons To Focus On Rehabilitation
by David Bash
Special To The Seattle Medium
Originally posted 10/12/2005
Black prisoners at Monroe Penitentiary got a self-made opportunity Saturday to address high-ranking government, community representatives and grassroots folks and to make a televised plea for a chance at “rehabilitation.”
Organized under their Black Prisoners Coalition (BPC), mostly long-term convicts who have become political activists, they group addressed Senator Adam Kline (D – 37th District); Representative Eric Pettigrew (D – 37th District); King County Councilman Larry Gossett; Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos’ aide; Seattle School Board director Brita Butler-Wall; Ken Quinn, the newly appointed African American superintendent of the prison; and about thirty additional people, many representing a diverse group of organizations, and churches at their Community Reform Summit.
Last year, Sen. Kline sponsored a bill to address the racial disproportionality of the application of the three strikes law showing that it unfairly impacted communities of color and was fiscally irresponsible quoting statistics showing how the three strikes law would end up spending huge amounts of money warehousing and caring for a less-dangerous and aged prison population. He also pushed a bill to eliminate the weapon-less 2nd degree robbery crime from being a strike. Both bills failed. But at last year’s BPC summit Kline said he was so impressed by the brother’s presentations that he would use his authority to have the next one televised on the governments TVW television network - which he’s has now done and will air on Weds. Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. on TVW.
“I was…blown away by the speakers who destroyed the stereotypes of prisoners. Sometimes it affects you in the heart how you thought things that you really believed you didn’t think,” Kline admitted, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a member of the Sentencing Guidelines Commission.
“We don’t talk about [the issue of] rehabilitation, said Kline. “I wish I could convince the majority of my legislative colleagues to help you out.”
Later in the presentation, inmate Patrick Bolt, who is White, presented statistics supporting Kline’s statements, claiming that the Monroe prison used to have twenty teachers in the GED and vocational training programs there but currently employs only two. In addition, he showed data from a three-state recidivism study showing as much as a thirty percent decline in re-incarcerations rates of inmates who took vocational training courses or improved their academic education in prison. Bolt also noted that the average age of a state inmate is 18-25, without a high school education, and that prison inmates at Monroe under 22 years of age without a high school diploma or GED are required to attend educational classes that are provided by Edmonds Community College.
Current data presented in state judiciary committee meetings show that for every $1 spent on education in prisons there is a $2 rate of return to the state in taxes and saved cell space and Bolt’s three-state study showed a $3.23 rate of return for inmate vocational training programs.
Rep. Eric Pettigrew told the inmates he loved them and that he was extremely impressed by their last presentation.
“I’ve seen some of the best presentations from the White House and major corporations. I saw the best presentation here,” said Pettigrew.
“I feel a sense of pride and pain that you [prisoners] can’t be in the community to hone your skills,” he added. “We’re working hard to make your bed ready for you to come back [to the community].”
King County Councilman Larry Gossett said that twenty-five percent of the world’s prison population is in the United States and that “500,000 Black men, not counting women, are in jail for drug-related crimes.” Gossett also stated that “pick-pocketing is a three-strikes crime” that can send you away for life in this state. But, “Just speaking truth to power does not necessarily change anything,” he said.
Of the panel of ten inmates, comprised mainly of three-strike lifers, making presentations at the community reform summit, Eric Smiley and Antonio Wheat are two of the most infamous. Smiley was convicted of killing a Black Seattle police officer in 1997, a crime which Smiley to this day he denies committing; and Wheat -- when he was an airman stationed at Paine Field near Everett in 1965 -- was convicted for the killing of three Seattle service station attendants during a string of robberies and was condemned to hang but later had that sentence changed to life imprisonment.
On a positive note for David (Dawud Malik) Riggins, he recently had his life sentence – of which he has served 40 years and which under the old independent sentencing review board (ISRB) guidelines would have had him released 20 years ago – commuted and will be released from prison soon. He asked Representative Pettigrew to personally ask legislators to readdress the newer Sentencing Review Board’s decisions on the older ISRB-system inmates like himself “who have already done their time.”