Archive for the ‘IL in Fiscal Ruins’ Category

If IL does not do this now, then when will it do so?

Posted by smallmouth63 on November 7, 2011

Illinois is one of the states with the most convictions being overturned because individuals are found to be wrongfully convicted. With IL prisons filled to the max and state prosecutors still pushing to incarcerate even low-level offenders, there are no protections in place to ensure that individuals are not wrongfully convicted. There are only a few innocence projects in IL and one of them is even the target of state prosecutors. Even though Governor Pat Quinn abolished the death penalty in IL, more has to be done to curb the abuse of authority in criminal prosecutions and the problems which have recently appeared in the state prison system. IL needs to establish a special commission, such as North Carolina has done in order to review individual cases for wrongful convictions.

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Hands in Chains, by Worradmu

Five teenagers were wrongfully convicted of the 1991 rape and murder of a teenage girl, Cateresa Matthews. Robert Taylor, James Harden and Jonathan Barr are now the last three individuals set free this week after DNA evidence showed that none of the five teenagers were, in fact, guilt despite each of their convictions. It took 20 years and the combined efforts of three of the nation’s innocence projects: the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, the New York Innocence Project and the University of Chicago Exoneration Project, to finally clear and free the men. The projects persevered in locating the DNA evidence despite being told repeatedly during a year-and-a-half that it did not exist. DNA testing cleared the five of involvement and instead implicates another man whom authorities now regard as a suspect.

James Harden Freed After Nearly 20 Years In Prison For Murder He Did Not Commit

Northwestern’s Center on Wrongful Convictions helps exonerate three men

Wrongly jailed Harvey man released after almost 20 years

Harden and Barr are brothers whose parents died during their imprisonment; their mother died while on the way to see them. “…”It’s an absolutely horrible thing that the state of Illinois has done to these children,” (Rob) Warden (Center on Wrongful Convictions) said. “The police coerced false confessions from three of these five kids. We think the police should not be able to lie to you about the strength (of their evidence). That practice ought to be banned…”

Friday, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, felt compelled to point out that even when someone has been proven, by science, to be innocent, the state too often refuses to admit that it made a costly mistake and is unwilling to do what is required to avoid the same error in the future. In his column below, he cites the comment by Anita Alvarez, who has been controversial in her own prosecutions:

The most perplexing and troubling thing about this case for me is that I don’t think we know exactly what happened here. It’s convoluted and confusing. I don’t believe we can say for sure that they’re innocent…. Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, interviewed Thursday after her office asked a judge to vacate the murder convictions of five men.

Alvarez does right, but gets it wrong

The article below appears in the July 2011, issue of reason.com, and tells the story of Paul House, cleared only because the US Supreme Court stepped in with the rare ruling that he should have a new trial, and then DNA testing showed incriminating evidence did not belong to him, but to the husband of the victim who had not even been tested at the time of the crime. As the article notes, if prosecutors and states were open to testing DNA evidence in all convictions, the numbers of those found to be wrongly accused might increase tremendously:

Wrongful Convictions

How many innocent Americans are behind bars?

“…It’s notable that one of the few places in America where a district attorney has specifically dedicated staff and resources to seeking out bad convictions—Dallas County, Texas—has produced more exonerations than all but a handful of states. That’s partly because Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins is more interested in reopening old cases than his counterparts elsewhere, and partly because of a historical quirk: Since the early 1980s the county has been sending biological crime scene evidence to a private crime lab for testing, and that lab has kept the evidence well preserved. Few states require such evidence be preserved once a defendant has exhausted his appeals, and in some jurisdictions the evidence is routinely destroyed at that point.

“I don’t think there was anything unique about the way Dallas was prosecuting crimes,” Watkins told me in 2008. “It’s unfortunate that other places didn’t preserve evidence too. We’re just in a unique position where I can look at a case, test DNA evidence from that period, and say without a doubt that a person is innocent.…But that doesn’t mean other places don’t have the same problems Dallas had.”

If the rest of the country has an actual (but undetected) wrongful conviction rate as high as Dallas County’s, the number of innocents in prison for felony crimes could be in the tens of thousands..”

Reason.com points out the main causes of wrongful convictions, including:

“…Bad forensic evidence. DNA technology was developed by scientists, and it has been thoroughly peer-reviewed by other scientists. Most of the forensic science used in the courtroom, on the other hand, was either invented in police stations and crime labs or has been refined and revised there to fight crime and obtain convictions. Most forensic evidence isn’t peer-reviewed, isn’t subject to blind testing, and is susceptible to corrupting bias, both intentional and unintentional. The most careful analysts can fall victim to cognitive bias creeping into their work, particularly when their lab falls under the auspices of a law enforcement agency. Even fingerprint analysis isn’t as sound as is commonly believed.

A congressionaly commissioned 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences found that many other forensic specialties that are often presented in court with the gloss of science—hair and carpet fiber analysis, blood spatter analysis, shoe print identification, and especially bite mark analysis—lack the standards, peer review, and testing procedures of genuinely scientific research and analysis. Some are not supported by any scientific literature at all. Moreover, the report found, even the forensic specialties with some scientific support are often portrayed in court in ways that play down error rates and cognitive bias.

According to an Innocence Project analysis of the first 225 DNA exonerations, flawed or fraudulent forensic evidence factored into about half of the faulty convictions.

Eyewitness testimony. Social scientists have known about the inherent weakness of eyewitness testimony for decades. Yet it continues to be the leading cause of wrongful convictions in America; it was a factor in 77 percent of those first 225 cases. Simple steps, such as making sure police who administer lineups have no knowledge of the case (since they can give subtle clues to witnesses, even unintentionally) and that witnesses are told that the actual perpetrator may not be among the photos included in a lineup, can go a long way toward improving accuracy. But such reforms also make it more difficult to win convictions, so many jurisdictions, under pressure from police and prosecutor groups, have been hesitant to embrace them.

False confessions. Difficult as it may be to comprehend, people do confess to crimes they didn’t commit. It happened in about one-quarter of the first 225 DNA exonerations. Confessions are more common among suspects who are minors or are mentally handicapped, but they can happen in other contexts as well, particularly after intense or abusive police interrogations.

In a candid 2008 op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times, D.C. Police Detective Jim Trainum detailed how he unwittingly coaxed a false confession out of a 34-year-old woman he suspected of murder. She even revealed details about the crime that could only have been known to police investigators and the killer. But Trainum later discovered that the woman couldn’t possibly have committed the crime. When he reviewed video of his interrogation, he realized that he had inadvertently provided the woman with those very specific details, which she then repeated back to him when she was ready to confess.

Trainum concluded that all police interrogations should be videotaped, a policy that would not just discourage abusive questioning but also provide an incontrovertible record of how a suspect’s confession was obtained. Here too, however, there has been pushback from some police agencies, out of fear that jurors may be turned off even by legitimate forms of questioning.

Jailhouse informants. If you were to take every jailhouse informant at his word, you’d find that a remarkably high percentage of the people accused of felonies boast about their crimes to the complete strangers they meet in jail and prison cells. (See “The Guilt Market,” page 24.) Informants are particularly valuable in federal drug cases, where helping a prosecutor obtain more convictions is often the only way to get time cut from a mandatory minimum sentence. That gives them a pretty good incentive to lie.

There is some disagreement over a prosecutor’s duty to verify the testimony he solicits from jailhouse informants. In the 2006, Church Point, Louisiana, case of Ann Colomb, for example, Brett Grayson, an assistant U.S. attorney in Louisiana, put on a parade of jailhouse informants whose claims about buying drugs from Colomb and her sons were rather improbable, especially when the sum of their testimony was considered as a whole. According to defense attorneys I spoke with, when one attorney asked him if he actually believed what his informants were telling the jury, Grayson replied that it doesn’t matter if he believes his witnesses; it only matters if the jury does. He expressed a similar sentiment in his closing argument.

After indicating that he isn’t familiar with the Colomb case and isn’t commenting on Grayson specifically, Josh Marquis says that sentiment is wrong. “A prosecutor absolutely has a duty to only put on evidence he believes is truthful,” Marquis says. “And that includes the testimony you put on from informants…”

On the heels of the acquittal of Casey Anthony, here in the USA, everyone was transfixed by the seemingly unlikely successful appeal by Amanda Knox, of her conviction in an Italian Court of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher. Yet, legal experts point out that while America affords criminal defendants more rights and protections before conviction than other countries; the reverse is often true after conviction, and in Italy, it perhaps is not so surprising that Amanda Knox succeeded in her appeal when one looks at the Italian appeal process. It becomes very difficult here for inmates to succeed on appeal because legal review in the USA mostly looks at only the legal and not the factual issues in cases. Even those individuals who are proven innocent through DNA testing have mostly lost at varies levels of the appeal process. State and federal courts most frequently decline review without even having to give any reason why. In Italy, the appeal process involves a brand new trial where all evidence and testimony is analyzed in the same terms as the first trial, but higher standards have to be met. And, unlike the state and US Supreme courts, the Italian Supreme Court cannot refuse to review a case. Italian defendants also have unlimited appeal rights to the Supreme Court of Cassation. That explains why the Italian Supreme Court will issue about 30,000 decisions per year in comparison to the 120 or so by the US Supreme Court. Italians can in fact appeal to the Supreme Court directly after the first trial.

How the Italian Appeal Process Works

“…Besides the broad appeal rights granted by the Italian law, an ulterior incentive to appeal is given by the fact that Italy has a very high “Reversal Rate” during the appeal process. Approximately half of all sentences rendered in the first trial are in fact reversed during the appeal process, a percentage which is 3 times higher than France for example. The ones that are not reversed often see a decrease in punishment.

No surprise therefore that Italians always appeal their sentences. And some analysts have even ventured to say that Italian appeal courts like to modify the sentences of the first trial just for the purpose of justifying their own existence. ..”

A TALE OF LIVES LOST, TAX DOLLARS WASTED AND JUSTICE DENIED

“…Wrongful convictions of men and women for violent crimes in Illinois have cost taxpayers $214 million and have imprisoned innocent people for 926 years, according to a seven-month investigation by the Better Government Association and the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

The joint investigation, which tracked exonerations from 1989 through 2010, also determined that while 85 people were wrongfully incarcerated, the actual perpetrators were on a collective crime spree that included 14 murders, 11 sexual assaults, 10 kidnappings and at least 62 other felonies…”

In January 2000, Illinois Governor George Ryan issued a moratorium on executions and appointed a commission to study capital punishment in Illinois to prevent the execution of the innocent.

The 15-member commission met for two years and then dissolved after issuing a report of 85 recommendations necessary to provide significant safeguards against further wrongful convictions in Illinois. In 2003, the Legislature enacted Senate Bill 472, which addressed some 20 of the Commission’s recommendations. Twelve other states also established commissions to study the causes of wrongful convictions, but only one state: North Carolina has established a special commission to investigate individual cases and free individuals found to be wrongly convicted:

Judges Free Inmate on Recommendation of Special Innocence Panel

“…90 percent of criminal cases, like Mr. Taylor’s, do not involve any DNA evidence…” The North Carolina Innocence Commission is presently now two for two, in the four cases it has considered, as it also found in April 2011, that In the case of State v. Kagonyera and Wilcoxson, the defendants were also innocent and subsequently freed.

Posted in IDOC, IL in Fiscal Ruins, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Terrible Wrongs - Other Cases, The Causes of Wrongful Convictions | Leave a Comment »

Where the Closures of State Facilities presently stand…

Posted by parchangelo on November 1, 2011

There are only three days left in the IL General Assembly Veto Session for 2011. Legislators are working behind the scenes now to prepare for when they return on November 8, 2011. At least one issue; the gambling expansion, seems to be stymied. Although a bill has been drawn up to dumb down the proposed expansion in state-wide gambling in order to address Governor Pat Quinn’s concerns, the absence of slots at racetracks will probably doom the passage of gambling expansion. Quinn claims that racetrack owners will be willing to accept a subsidy in lieu of slots, but it is clear that this is not the case. This result of no compromise will be to kill any gambling expansion, and may be the one Pat Quinn intended from the first by proposing extensive changes to the bill the legislature originally proposed.

Non-action on gambling may free up some consideration time for other issues. The biggest public concern remaining is what will happen to the seven state facilities which Governor Pat Quinn has targeted for closures beginning December 31, 2011, due to “lack of money” to operate them. There have been public hearings state-wide for each of the facilities and a lot of public outrage expressed to the state and to legislators over the haphazard way in which Governor Quinn selected these facilities for closure. Many legislators accuse Quinn of playing partisan politics by selecting mostly downstate facilities located in mostly Republican districts to close. Critics point out that the Quinn administrations claims of the monetary savings realized by closing these facilities are over-stated and do not include the costs the state will incur having to make alternative placement and treatment plans for the thousands of individuals the facilities presently provide services for. Plenty of people regard Quinn’s initial proposal to close these facilities as a political ploy to try to push the legislature to still try to get his own way and make them agree to borrow more money to cover state budget deficits as he initially proposed at the start of the year. Quinn was hoping to turn public outrage and a time deadline against the legislators as pressure to approve borrowing.

So far, this appears to have backfired against Quinn. There has been plenty of outrage, but so far, most of it is directed at Quinn for using the public as a pawn in his disagreement with the legislature. Legislators are distancing themselves from Quinn and attempting to work around him to come up with the funds needed to operate each of these facilities, for at least the short-term. While everyone admits that some state facility closures may be necessary down the road, no body likes the manner in which Quinn came up with his short list without much input and consideration from others. It is generally agreed that such closures should come only after much discussion and after all other more reasonable attempts to save money are made by the state. That may happen next year or the year after. For now, both sides of the legislature are trying to come up with money to avoid the closures. Quinn vetoed $376 million from the budget sent to him this year by the General Assembly. Instead of looking to override Quinn’s veto, legislators are instead doing Quinn’s job and looking to possibly use those funds to cover the shortfalls in operating the seven state facilities through sometime next year: (Click on each red link to read each of the articles below)

Quinn’s $376 million budget veto likely to be spent elsewhere

We believe that state legislators will be able to pull together enough funding to cover the budget shortage for these facilities and avoid the accompanying layoffs, simply because they know they have little choice. Yet there are other complications which will be unpopular. The money they are looking to use are basically just delayed Medicaid payments into next fiscal year and vetoed school transportation funds. Using this money elsewhere will cost the state a big federal Medicaid match and not be like downstate.

Quinn’s administrative staff is supposedly helping the legislators review the funding sources and figures, but Quinn himself is becoming more outspoken in criticizing the legislature lately and this is not helping his relationship with the legislature and their regard for him:

Quinn says he’s no pal of lawmakers

Quinn earlier indicated that he would work with legislators to try to avoid the prison closures if possible. This appears to have been a PR statement on his part, in early October, when he felt hopeful that he could bring public pressure to bear against them. Now that his power is pretty empty, he has to follow through on his words:

Quinn would consider keeping prison open

Nevertheless, the hasty planning in the closures proposal has become evident in the past month. At least one planned closure plan, for Logan is now being redrawn since the impracticalities in it would make it impossible to implement:

Logan closure plan altered, more prison crowding looms

Quinn’s closure plans are clearly premature and drastic; his putting the horse before the cart. It was only a year or so ago that Quinn made a big display about soliciting the public and state workers to submit information and suggestions to a state website about ways in which the state could save money. Now, Quinn is in the position of having started a cutting process which he may not be able to demonstrate is in fact necessary since he can’t show that these suggestions and other options have been thoroughly explored. The following item appeared just the other day. The question is how many other ways for the state to save money has Quinn tried up to now, and will the state suddenly take up more of these options?

Zipcars to be available for traveling state employees

While the biggest number of layoffs remain in the future, a small number of them are already beginning. Quinn will now be in the position to receive the backlash from these layoffs coming at a time when the economy is still poor and the holiday season is beginning:

Two dozen state workers to get pink slips

Posted in IL in Fiscal Ruins, Uncategorized | Tagged: 2100 layoffs, Chester Mental Health, IDOC, IL Governor Pat Quinn, Illinois Department of corrections, Illinois Fall Veto Session, Illinois state facility closures, Illinois Youth Center, Jack Mabley Development, Jacksonville development, Logan prison, Quinn's closure list, Singer Mental health, Tinley Park Mental Health | Leave a Comment »

IL Governor Pat Quinn emerging as the loser in IL Veto session

Posted by tennesseetree on October 31, 2011

The State of IL has problems. The August 2011, headline below sums up the situation. IL is fiscally broken, and the governor and the legislature have placed themselves in the position of having only three days this week to fix the 2010 budget enough to advance to the next year’s budget.

Illinois Statehouse News: Illinois 50 out of 50 in 2010 for state deficit

Governor Pat Quinn, has so far fumbled the political football passed to him by Rod Blagovich. The IL veto session is showing his political inepitude to be the biggest obstacle to working to resolve the outstanding budget issues which need to be compromised on for the state to begin addressing next year’s budget.

State legislators last week showed determination to not give in to Quinn’s demands that the State take the easy choice and simply borrow more money to cover this year’s shortfalls. Instead, legislators are holding firm to work with the revenue the state has and still come up with enough funds to close out this year. Quinn threatened closure of a number of critical state facilities, including IL Department of Corrections Logan prison and the Chester Mental Health Center, for lack of money. While it is possible that one of these might still be on the chopping block next year, legislators have indicated that they will not allow unconsidered ad-hoc and wide-scale closure decisions by Quinn. For now, they will simply work around Quinn to avoid allowing any of his closures without resorting to more fiscal borrowing.

Governor Pat Quinn’s attempts to manipulate the legislative action have cost him a lot of respect in political circles. He has put himself in so many contradictory and self-binding situations that even the New York Times felt compelled to comment on his amateur moves in the article below:

As Fall Veto Session Begins, Lawmakers Question Quinn’s Ability to Lead

State legislators are up against very serious fiscal problems and a big time deadline. Quinn’s attempts to change legislative decisions has muddied the water. Legislators have to reach some compromise this week on a whole list of budget issues which are negatively impacting life and just about every business in the state as demonstrated in the whole spate of news articles about the budget that have been cropping up in the media over the last few weeks, such as the following examples:

Lawmakers yet to tackle massive $85B pension debt

Small businesses nickel-and-dimed by state

State’s tardiness costs you money

Few signs of movement on paying late bills

Local legislators: Overspending must stop

Bills get paid faster with lawmakers’ help

Illinois backlog adds to schools’ money problems

Fiscal year 2012 off to bad start for schools

Prisons have hard time buying food

Universities cope with chronic late payments

Small businesses feeling the pinch here

A long wait: Unpaid bills undercut business partners

Deadbeat state: Illinois owes billions in unpaid bills

Legislators may come out with some action this week regarding state pensions, but, if so, actions will certainly be challenged in court and, like Wisconsin, IL will be viewed as an attempt to break unionism, since Madigan is trying now to disengage Quinn’s power to represent the state in negotiating state union contracts. Whether the legislature will succeed in moving on all the outstanding items this week remains to be seen. A recent court decision, also below may additionally give them more leeway in looking a funds available to be moved around:

Lawmakers to work on budget during break in veto session

Cross: Deal made for pension bill

Madigan seeks cap on state pay raises

Illinois Supreme Court: State money cannot be special

Even with severe budget woes, it is ironic to instances of political pandering by Quinn and outright greed on the side of union officials still cropping up. It goes to show us that the harshness of the fiscal crisis is still somewhat not real to some folks in power.

Retired IDOT chief back on payroll

Our Opinion: Pension ploy by 2 lobbyists is outrageous

Posted in IL in Fiscal Ruins, Uncategorized | Tagged: IL Governor Pat Quinn, Illinois Department of corrections, Illinois fiscal crisis, Illinois gambling, Illinois legislation action, Illinois state pensions, Illinois Veto session, Madigan, Quinn's threatened closures, state facilities closing | Leave a Comment »

Mental Illiness & prison overcrowding: the two do not mix well…

Posted by pillowfiends on October 22, 2011

All of us know someone who is mentally ill in some way or another. Fact is, most of our own personality “quirks” contain some echo of behavior which is a symptom of mental illness. When it is our behavior, our “quirks” we manage to rationalize and excuse it. When we are accosted on the street by someone exhibiting a more extreme form of the same behavior, we are offended and unsympathetic. What we fail to realize is just how many people need some type of help in order to function “normally”. Instead, we find it easy to criminalize what we do not want to understand or acknowledge. We wrongly believe that the majority of the mentally ill are violent towards others. Few of us take the time or effort to get to know or understand the mentally ill and mental illness. Some very “intelligent” and respected individuals in the Rockford community, for example, who have their own “quirks”and are capable of exercising more control over them, persistently and eagerly demonize and condemn individuals for the legal situations they often land in as a result of mental illness. It is too bad they are too quick to feel morally justified without having taken the time to ascertain what other individuals have to cope with from the outset of their lives. The article below gives some idea of the problem we have created in state prisons because we are deliberately blind to the welfare of others:

Mental Illness in the Prison System

Posted in IDOC, IL in Fiscal Ruins, Local Issues, Terrible Wrongs - Other Cases, The Causes of Wrongful Convictions | Leave a Comment »

IL Prisontalk finally posts realistic message to members about MGT

Posted by parchangelo on October 22, 2011

Illinois prisontalk (IPT) is critical of anyone spreading rumors about when Meritorious Good Time (MGT) credit is likely to return for IL prisoners. IPT doesn’t want to create false expectations among IL inmates and their families. This past Spring session, however, IPT online forum leaders succumbed to temptation and disregarded IPT’s own goal. IPT engaged it’s members in a misguided effort to contact legislators to support passage of specific criminal bills in the General Assembly which had no effect on the reinstatement of MGT but only served to toughen criminal penalties on offenders. Fortunately, most of the bills IPT advocated passing in Spring died at the end of the legislative session.

With the general, prevailing, public opinion being anti-offender and pro-punishment, IL General Assembly members need no additional encouragement to toughen criminal penalties and send more people to prison. Instead, legislators and local courts and counties need to understand that no matter how much money we spend housing prisoners and getting offenders off the streets for any maximum length of time, our capacity to hold prisoners in IL is finite, and ultimately they will return to our communities. If they are merely warehoused and all rehabilitation efforts made are only lip-service; then they return to our communities better criminals than when they left with no incentive to change; and the whole vicious cycle starts all over again. IL already virtually tops the list of our nation’s states for it’s incarcerate numbers. At this time of stubborn recession, state taxpayers and society cannot afford to foot this bill.

The IL fall legislative veto session to due to get underway on October 25, 2011. It consists of six short days in which major legislative budgetary issues from the past year still remain to be resolved. Again, during the last couple of weeks, the IPT online forum was abuzz with advice by IPT that new legislation regarding MGT was to be drawn up and passed during the fall veto session. As the message now posted at IPT indicates, this was merely rumor. There is no possibility that any Corrections bills dealing with the MGT issue will be considered at the fall session. As, we have previously advised, no legislative changes will occur to resolve the overcrowding in the IL Department of Corrections (IDOC) or promote any sort of “early release” initiatives until the Spring legislative session in 2012, at the earliest.

We have said that Governor Pat Quinn, retains control over what happens at IDOC and over any departmental initiatives to relieve state prison over-crowding. This remains accurate. Quinn could reinstate MGT in some form, if he chose to. What has become increasingly apparent over time is that Quinn, having taken political heat from first attempting to increase the release of state prisoners, is not going to stick his neck out again on this issue. Consequently, he has not been responsive to pressure to reinstate MGT in any form until he is ready. Moreover, Quinn has demonstrated a habit of extreme rationalization to justify his political opportunism. He has reneged on agreements made to political allies when politically expedient to do so, simply on the belief that he will get what he wants in the short-term and can afford to leave the rest for the courts to sort out down the road. Perhaps this is the legacy of Rod Blagovich, who also operated in the same manner when he was governor; just with more flamboyance.

What this means is that Quinn is unlikely to do anything progressive to resolve prison condition problems and overcrowding until the last minute and even then, only if he is forced to so by lawsuits and legal actions. He will not be willing to compromise. So prison reform advocate groups such those which IPT are allied with are going to have to do more than advocate for the return of MGT; they are going to have to sue the state. We suggest that the sooner they prepare to do so the better!

MGT LEGISLATION ON BACK BURNER TEMPORARILY

« on: October 20, 2011, 08:43:24 PM »

Hello members:

For those with their hopes set high that MGT will be reinstated anytime soon this isn’t good news. It’s time to wipe away the past rumors, pending legislation, and speculations of the restoral of MGT in 2011. It’s not going to happen. The past pending legislation wasn’t really legislation that would’ve restored MGT anyway….it was just legislation to toughen up the criteria for those released IF it’s ever restored. It makes little difference whether it was passed or not.

The ultimate decision lands on Gov. Quinn, who has expressed many times that he’s not about to restore MGT any time soon…if ever. It’s a political timebomb that he’s unlikely to put himself within arm’s reach again. He likes his job.

So we’re going to clean the slate and start again in Square 1. Forget everything that has happened in the past…

Everyone knows and agrees that the IDOC is crowded…this isn’t the first time it’s been overcrowded and it hasn’t exploded yet. If the IDOC and Quinn were worried about rioting or anything else explosive they have alternatives to release inmates….regardless of MGT.

Just because nothing was resolved in 2011 it hasn’t stopped a handful of activists that are still hoping to move the Governor to restore MGT. They are preparing to draft legislation that will be introduced in the Spring session…

It’s impossible to get it included in the Fall session of the Legislature. It must wait until Spring and it’s going to need backing from the public. This informal group of activists met recently to discuss the best possible plan of action and this will begin with a public meeting to discuss overcrowding within the IDOC…probably in late November or early December. We will notify you of the date and particulars when they are decided upon. Encouraging attempts are being made to sign on legislators to sponsor this new bill.

Let me remind you that even with successful legislation Quinn still has the ultimate power to approve the restoration of MGT.

Suggestions are being formulated for the contents of this bill, including a revision of MGT as it was previously implemented, and the criteria for inmates to receive MGT/SMGT.

There is nothing carved in stone so please don’t speculate or ask a thousand questions….there’s nothing more to tell you.

In the meantime the IDOC may possibly solve some of it’s own problems by finding creative ways to release inmates earlier than scheduled…if so, we know nothing about it and don’t want to hear all the rumors again. Look what all the rumors have done in the past 20 months? There’ve been a thousand posts here about it…and plenty of arguments and bickering over something that everyone hopes will benefit our inmates.

If inmates are released early, for whatever reason, that’s something to celebrate.

When MGT was suspended I cautioned everyone here that it would be an uphill battle and that it wasn’t likely that MGT would be restored. I still stand by that….but there’s always hope as influential people are working on a solution. When the time is right they will ask for our help here at IPT and we’ll keep you informed how you might help.

Daz

Posted in IDOC, IL in Fiscal Ruins, Meritorious Good Time | Tagged: IDOC, IL Governor Pat Quinn, Illinois Department of corrections, Is Good time reinstated, Meritorious Good Time, MGT, Quinn | 1 Comment »

No Action On IDOC Meritorious Good Time, (MGT) Expected in 2011!

Posted by parchangelo on September 12, 2011

Forget about the IL Fall Veto Session beginning October 25, 2011. The veto session is going to be consumed by budget issues. No decisions made will resolve the horrible prison over-crowding in Illinois. If Meritorious Good Time (MGT) is even mentioned by legislators, it will not be in the context of them having the power to resurrect it.

Governor Pat Quinn is the person with the ability to act to reduce the present prison population in some manner; and he has chosen not to act until possibly 2012. Sharon Ellman, a spokesperson for the IL Department of Corrections has stated multiple times that there is presently no plan for MGT to return. Well, we are getting the idea that she is correct.

Governor Pat Quinn has had plenty on his plate this year with the budget occupying his attention. He apparently does not regard the denial of MGT or any supplemental credit for inmates (even minor offenders) to be a hardship on inmates or MGT something they are deserving of. So, he is not now considering any action to reduce the prison population. Truth is, with his proposed cuts and closures, he may feel there is room to squeeze in more bodies into some state facilities.

The only action on the IL Department of Corrections agenda is the combination of all their 49 or so separate computer and data sources into one database in conjunction with the Microsoft Offender 360 software program it is adapting. This process of computer changeover has been going on for awhile now, and lots of inmates report that facility computers are mostly crashing down for extended periods of time because of problems in the changeover. Since the computers are relied upon by CO’s for just about everything, inmates are going weeks and some times multiple months without access to commissary, and movement and supply restrictions are being arbitrarily applied when the computers cannot be accessed.

The database integration to Offender 360 is not scheduled to be completed until sometime in 2012. Who knows when, since it is likely to be delayed as more problems will arise.

Don’t expect Quinn to plan or authorize any meaningful early release of inmates until the computer switchover is completed. Quinn’s indifference to the prison over-crowding issues won’t end until he is either sure all Corrections procedures and technology is in place to handle releasing anyone without mistakes being made, or else he is publicly pressured to act.

Quinn has put himself out there to battle with the legislature to get more money for this year’s budget. We encourage readers to contact legislators and give them your perspective as to why he should be criticized and held accountable for numerous mistakes including inaction on prison overcrowding issues.

The next step on the state improvement agenda, after fixing Offender 360, is devising a new audit and accounting system to implement across the board for all state agencies (which now each maintain their own antiquated and costly systems). We certainly don’t want to wait for that computer change…

Posted in IDOC, IL in Fiscal Ruins | Tagged: IDOC, IL Governor Pat Quinn, Illinois Department of corrections, Is Good time reinstated, Meritorious Good Time, MGT, Microsoft Offender 360 | 1 Comment »

Quinn’s proposed Cuts & Closures Backfiring So Far…

Posted by mikethemouth on September 12, 2011

Nobody is taking Governor Pat Quinn’s threats to lay-off state employees en masse and close down seven state facilities because of a budget crunch seriously so far. As we said, it is doubtful that Quinn is going to be successful in carrying out lay-offs and closures, because he has too many hurtles to cross. What Quinn’s tactic is managing to do is generate a lot of negative publicity for Quinn’s overall competence. Kurt Erickson’s article below summarizes why everyone is dissing Quinn for threatening large-scale lay-offs and facility closures when Quinn chooses to ignore other possible alternative revenue sources available to the state to raise the equivalent, if not more, money: (Click on article titles)

Erickson: Quinn’s announcement viewed as bluff

Illinois takes in more cash from taxpayers, less from feds

Below is AFSCME’s factsheet on the proposed Quinn lay-offs and facility closures. Aside from the drastic effects on social service agencies for the disabled, AFSCME points out that Quinn is proposing to close Chester, the only mental health facility serving the mentally ill inmates of the state prison population and the IL Youth Center, the state’s only juvenile boot camp. This only goes to show readers how unrealistic the proposed closures are and to indicate the degree of opposition Quinn would face if he actually pushes to make these closures.

View this document on Scribd

What this directly shows that this is all a political ploy by the Governor to pressure the state legislature into approving a supplemental budget appropriation for the year, is that fact that the proposed actions are designed to inflict maximum pain at the cost of relatively minimum gain: since the state would only save less than $55 million this fiscal year, or a staggering 0.2 percent of the entire state budget. Since Quinn’s budget showfall is a $2.2 billion dollar gap, $55 million will hardly cover it. Quinn would still have to depend on state legislators or other means to cover the rest, and antagonizing them now is a poor strategy. As some are pointing out, it will take money to save money: (Click on article title)

Closing mental facilities to cost millions

As to the number of state employees, remember that IL ranks just about last (if not last) in the country as to the ratio of approx 97 state employees to every 10,000 inhabitants. US states average 143 workers per 10,000 residents. IL has been number 49 on the list for several years since cutting state employees became the priority under Blagovich.

Posted in IDOC, IL in Fiscal Ruins | Tagged: Chester, closing state facilities, IL Governor Pat Quinn, laying off state workers, Logan Correctional, Quinn, Quinn's proposed closures | Leave a Comment »

September 2011 & Trouble comes to River City

Posted by lactoselazy on September 7, 2011

First of all, readers are advised not to panic!

Websites are awash with concerned readers. There is some heavy politiking going on at the state level in Springfield right now with the Governor making threats and noises about cutting state employees and facilities. It is just NOISE and Pat Quinn positioning himself. What will come out of all this postering is nothing in the short-term and October, and possibly little that is productive in the long-run.

BUT THIS DOES PRESENT AN OPPORTUNITY FOR THOSE INTERESTED TO HOLD GOVERNOR PAT QUINN TO ACCOUNTABILITY!

Below are some of the scary articles coming out since Governor Pat Quinn started claiming that he is poised on the brink of announcing layoffs across several agencies and closing down several facilities in order to meet the budget:

Quinn plans layoffs, facility closings

Gov. Quinn says job ‘reductions’ needed

One fewer prison, more inmate crowding possible for Illinois

Pontiac and Vandalia prisons are both being tossed around as the correctional facilities most likely to be targeted for closure by Pat Quinn. Quinn may carry through on his threats by announcing layoffs and closure in the coming weeks, but as the above articles indicate and the below articles spell out; Quinn’s ability to carry out his threats is largely hollow because of the significant obstacles he would have to overcome, including a couple of them he created himself.

First of all, Quinn so far, has not gotten his way. The state legislature sent him a budget $2.2 billion short of what he wanted. Quinn was unable to sweet-talk the legislature into borrowing money to cover that short-fall during the last legislative session, and since May, Quinn has not found enough cuts to make in the budget they sent him to cover it. So, Quinn wants to force the legislature into approving a supplemental appropriation for the year during the fall veto session which begins October 25, 2011.

Quinn has the state already being challenged in court for renegment on an agreement he made with the public employees union, AFSCME, by not allowing pay raises as scheduled to state employees. Now, he will supposedly claim that the union has not kept the terms of another agreement with them not to layoff staff and close facilities as an basis to claim that he can can do so. He will be quickly challenged in court on the layoffs and proposed closures, and it is very unlikely that any court will rule in his favor. The legal process to implement any of these will be lengthy and is also complicated by the fact as discussed below, the legislature has made it more difficult now for IL governors to simply close any facility:

Quinn can’t just talk about closings

Quinn must justify facility closings under state law

Whether Quinn will succeed in getting more money from this legislature this fall is an open question. He is unlikely to succeed in closing anything and cutting staff. AFSCME is taking a common-sense, lets all cut through the BS posturing in it’s budget perspective:

…“Our state urgently needs leadership. Rather than disrupt vital services and add to Illinois’ already alarmingly high unemployment rate, the governor should work with the General Assembly to forestall service cuts and layoffs. The necessary funding is available if the legislature takes action when it returns for the veto session. The Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability reports that revenue is coming in this year at higher than projected levels.

“We call on the governor and the legislative leaders to work together for the good of our state. This is not a time for partisanship or finger-pointing. It’s a time to work together to ensure that essential services to maintain public safety and meet human needs can continue to be provided. AFSCME stands ready to be part of that effort.”…

By using such an aggressive and antagonistic approach now to resolve the budget dilemna he has been grappling with all year, Pat Quinn, may be biting himself and fellow democrats in the rear-end. Pat Quinn appears to feel that the decisions he is making and carrying out are “morally” the “right thing to do”, but he is far from invulnerable in his position of moral superiority. Enough time has passed from his election win to reveal that Quinn lacks decisive leadership. Indeed, his procrastination on major issues and actions since then has squandered any voter momentum from the last election and leaves even republicans looking good.

Quinn’s actions make him a target for Republicans and AFSCME and other unions who should now realize that any agreements he makes with them are only politically expedient and will be broken by him when required. Voters, politicians, and interested parties should now be focusing their scutiny on Quinn for unnecessarily creating social and economic havoc on a grand scale. Quinn is poised to try to make public employees and social service agencies pawns to his political agenda as he has done for the past year and a half to prison inmates and their families.

As Quinn’s campaign unrolls, this is an opportunity for those concerned (and we urge our readers to do so) to contact the media, AFSCME, and Quinn’s Republican critics to calmly point out to them that Quinn is calling on others to make huge sacrifices in terms of jobs, funding, and closures, at a time when he is costing the state to incur millions of dollars in additional costs and prison over-crowding simply because he has failed to reinstate the awarding of Meritorious Good Time (MGT) credits for state inmates or otherwise resolve the problem and escalated costs of state prison over-crowding. The state of IL Department of Corrections has been patiently stacking, racking, and packing in mostly low-level offenders without respite since December 2009, when Quinn suspended further awarding of MGT. It needs to be pointed out to them that not only has Quinn procrastinated over this time, but that he has been allowed to be silent and not provide any public explanation as to how much longer these additional costs to taxpayers of at least $17,000 per year per inmate will continue before he acts and to explain what his solution will be.

Real pain and suffering are being endured currently by those within the corrections system. The state prison over-crowding issue has become so bad that even some Republicans are beginning to sound the alarm, as in the article below. Even they are advocating that the state urgently needs to see some form of inmate “early release”program happen as soon as possible:

Lawmakers see ‘train wreck’ with prison overcrowding, understaffing

IL inmates have gone through a summer of humanly intolerable temperatures outside and within prison facilities which are out-dated and which not only lack air-conditioning, but which are built to aggravate temperatures within facilities. Inmates have been housed in gyms and in basements, corridors, and any place a cot can be put. The conditions reported below are not new. Vandalia prison had the same conditions reported last summer with water in basements and mold. It has just taken the John Howard Association a year to get there to tour the facility and to issue this report. Vandalia is not alone with these problems and so far IDOC is just trying to keep the lid on an explosive situation.

Group outlines harsh conditions at Ill. prison

Posted in IDOC, IL in Fiscal Ruins, Uncategorized | Tagged: IDOC closures, Il budget cuts, IL budget proposed layoffs, IL Governor Pat Quinn, Illinois Department of corrections, Is Good time reinstated, Meritorious Good Time, Pontiac, Quinn, Quinn layoffs, Vandalia prison | Leave a Comment »

Illinois headed toward a prison meltdown?

Posted by scaryhouse on August 31, 2011

The article below is written by Kurt Erickson and appears on www.thesouthern.com. Erickson is one of the few politically savy Illinois media investigative reporters who have been following the long saga and potentially embarrassing story of Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s single-handled responsibility for creating a huge fiscal mess for Illinois when he first cut off all discretionary early release efforts to release state inmates by the Illinois Department of Corrections in December 2009, and how Quinn has since then failed to act in any manner to resolve the subsequent massive overcrowding of state prisons which resulted from his action.

This is a huge political story and a wholly, self-created dilemma for the Governor that Republican legislators and fiscal critics should be jumping all over Quinn on. If played up properly by his opponents, he negative publicity Quinn deserves on this issue could suffice to render him and the Democratic party (which is mute on urging Quinn to resolve it) highly vulnerable at the polls come next election.

Basically, at a time when the State is already fiscally broke, Quinn’s action is making all state prisons, “rack, stack, and pack” prisoners who are mostly small-time, minor offenders, which the state can ill-afford to house. Quinn has added millions of dollars to the cost of state corrections, not because he first suspended the early release programs, but because he has since procrastinated since cutting off the programs by failing to take any intermediate actions to resolve the prison overcrowding or to control the actions of IDOC staff at facilites.

Evidently, Quinn’s modius operandi is to procrastinate well beyond any reasonable time period over all important issues. He has dragged his heels over policy and fiscal issues before, but the IDOC prison overcrowding affects the lives and well-being of many families and individuals.

_____________________________________________________________

BY KURT ERICKSON/the Southern.com

SPRINGFIELD – The Quinn administrations decision to continue cramming more inmates into already overcrowded prisons could put the state on the road to a lawsuit.

After packing its own prisons too tightly for decades, California officials were ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in May to slash the inmate population to 137 percent of what the overall system was designed to hold.

That has left the state scrambling to dump more than 30,000 prisoners into county-level jails or privately operated lock-ups over the next two years.

In recent months, however, officials changed the way they calculate capacity.

Instead of using an industry standard based on the number of cells, the state is now measuring capacity based on how many beds can fit in a facility. The new capacity for Illinois prisons is listed at 51,000 inmates.

A key attorney in the California lawsuit says Illinois revamped measuring stick is similar to claiming a three bedroom home can actually sleep 25 people if beds are placed in living rooms, laundry rooms and storage spaces.

“Technically, they can stack triple bunks in every room,” said Rebekah Evenson, a Berkeley-based attorney who helped shepherd the California lawsuit through the legal system.

John Maki, executive director of the John Howard Association, a prison watchdog group, said that bureaucratic maneuver could land the state in hot water.”Thats what California got in trouble for,” Maki said. “Were seeing the same kind of stuff.”

DOC differs

Corrections spokeswoman Sharyn Elman said the new capacity number reflects changes that have been made to the original design of the prisons, allowing the agency to say the state is operating at 95 percent capacity.

“Here in Illinois our prison population is not at the over-capacity level,”

Elman noted.Elman, however, said an attempt by the department to gain national accreditation was dropped after the inmate population began to grow. As part of the American Correctional Association accreditation process, prisons must meet certain specifications for square footage per inmate – a standard that may not be possible for Illinois given the additional prisoners.

Evenson said recalculating capacity based on bed space is “very, very irresponsible” because it could lead to numerous problems.

Crowding typically results in more violence behind bars. It also likely means fewer educational opportunities, which already had been reduced because of Illinois on-going budget woes.

“Mentally ill people become sicker,” Evenson said.

The increase in prisoners also has raised concerns about flat or reduced staffing levels of prison guards.

On Thursday, two Republican state senators are planning a press conference designed to spotlight staffing levels within the Department of Corrections. State Sens. John O. Jones of Mount Vernon and Shane Cultra of Onarga both represent districts that have a number of overcrowded prisons within their boundaries.

Solutions?

For now, however, it doesnt appear the Quinn administration has a solution in sight.

There are no plans on the books to build more prisons to help ease overcrowding. In fact, Illinois is in the process of selling an unused maximum-security prison to the federal government.

The department also has not made any public announcements about whether or when it will reinstate an early release program.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, which represents corrections workers, said overcrowding has made the states prison system more dangerous than usual.

“Ignoring the problem is unacceptable,” noted AFSCME spokesman Anders Lindall. “The state must hire staff to ensure safety and provide rehabilitative programs, and it must develop and implement a responsible good-time policy.”

via Illinois headed toward a prison meltdown?.

Posted in IDOC, IL in Fiscal Ruins, Terrible Wrongs - Other Cases, The Causes of Wrongful Convictions, Uncategorized | Tagged: early release, IDOC, idoc early release, IDOC overcrowding, Illinois Department of corrections, illinois prison overcrowding, Is Good time reinstated, Meritorious Good Time, Pat Quinn Illinois Governor, Quinn and early release, Quinn inaction at IDOC | Leave a Comment »

Growing Evidence That Prosecutors & Courts Are Often Wrong

Posted by mikethemouth on August 28, 2011

Prosecutors are under pressure to obtain convictions at any cost; it does not seem to matter much to them whether or not a suspect is guilty. Once prosecutors charge an individual, police seldom continue to look for other suspects and the prosecutors push ahead to try to convict in court. Often evidence arises during or after trial indicating that the individual may be innocent. Although prosecutors are mandated by law to disclose all evidence to the defense which would exonerate the suspect; they seem to regard their responsibility as a technicality and seldom do. Consequently there are many wrongly convicted individuals serving prison terms for crimes they did not commit, and their ranks are swelling rapidly in some states as the emphasis on convictions continue.

The article below points out that the number of apparent wrongful convictions is now being recognized in progressive states which are recognizing the need to begin to remedy the problem. These states are taking steps to ensure that two things are available to defendants: physical evidence in criminal cases and greater access to biological evidence and DNA testing to give them the chance to prove their innocence, and states are establishing “innocence” commissions to investigate allegations of wrongful conviction and help free those who are unjustly imprisoned.

Illinois knows the extent of it’s problems with wrongful convictions. As the article points out, IL has established a “commission” to study state wrongful convictions and make recommendations lawmakers, police, and courts. This is not enough.

Illinois is one of the leading states for wrongful convictions and presently, there are only a couple of privately operated “innocence projects” in Illinois from which inmates can attempt to obtain help in investigating their cases and proving their innocence once convicted. These innocence projects are woefully underfunded and understaffed, with few resources to investigate the mountains of applications from inmates they receive yearly, in comparison to the resources available to States Attorneys to help them convict anyone.

Like North Carolina, Illinois desperately needs to establish a state-operated investigative innocence commission; lawmakers need to make legal post-conviction DNA testing a right, and prosecutors need to stop opposing reasonable efforts of individual prisoners to prove their innocence.

States look to right wrong convictions

Posted in IDOC, IL in Fiscal Ruins, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Terrible Wrongs - Other Cases, The Causes of Wrongful Convictions | Tagged: cost of wrongful conviction, IDOC, Illinois Department of corrections, prosecutorial misconduct, wrongful conviction | Leave a Comment »

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How many innocent Americans are behind bars?

The State of IL has problems. The August 2011, headline below sums up the situation. IL is fiscally broken, and the governor and the legislature have placed themselves in the position of having only three days this week to fix the 2010 budget enough to advance to the next year’s budget.

Evidently, Quinn’s modius operandi is to procrastinate well beyond any reasonable time period over all important issues. He has dragged his heels over policy and fiscal issues before, but the IDOC prison overcrowding affects the lives and well-being of many families and individuals.

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