Should a one-point difference in I.Q. mean the death penalty? SCOTUS says no.

Supreme Court struck down Florida decision that Freddie Lee Hall was eligible for execution with an IQ score of 71, above the cutoff of disability at 70.

by Bernadette Rabuy, May 28, 2014

On Tuesday, May 27, 2014, the United States Supreme Court struck down Florida’s strict use of an I.Q. cutoff as a legitimate way to decide which mentally disabled individuals must be spared from the death penalty. In a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Florida was in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

In a 2002 Supreme Court case, Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court gave states general guidelines for determining intellectual disability: low I.Q. scores, a lack of fundamental social and practical skills, and the presence of both conditions before age 18. Furthermore, while the Supreme Court left the specific qualifications to the states, it did assert that I.Q. scores under approximately 70 typically indicate disability.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court further curbed the use of the death penalty. While in a 2012 decision the Florida Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Freddie Lee Hall was eligible to be executed since he had been measured with I.Q. scores of 71, 73, and 80, on Tuesday Justice Kennedy disagreed with the Florida Supreme Court arguing that intellectual disability should not be boiled down to a rigid number and should be understood as a more complex condition. As Hofstra law professor Eric M. Freedman states, “death row inmates commonly suffer from multidimensional mental problems.” This ruling will affect other states with similar cutoffs, such as Kentucky, Virginia, and Alabama.

Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision is reflective of recent discussions to further limit the use of the death penalty, which Justice Kennedy called the “gravest sentence our society may impose.” A recent study by Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan Law School, found that more than 4% of all defendants who have been sentenced to death are likely innocent. Gross explains that while the number of innocent people who have been executed is fairly low, it is more common for innocent defendants to be sentenced to prison for life and be forgotten. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that prisoners who are awaiting execution on death row receive more intense scrutiny than prisoners whose sentences are reduced to life in prison. As there is further examination of the death penalty, it is important to additionally examine those serving life sentences, especially since one of every nine state prisoners is serving a life sentence.

Even though Justice Kennedy wrote that Mr. Freddie Lee Hall may or may not be intellectually disabled, Mr. Hall will have the opportunity to present evidence of his intellectual disability and receive a new assessment by the lower courts. Careful examination of the death penalty and life in prison are essential in order to maintain, what Justice Kennedy called, “our nation’s commitment to dignity.”

Three massive new briefings from the Prison Policy Initiative

316 graphs of state-by-state data on racial disparities and prison growth

by Peter Wagner and Leah Sakala, May 28, 2014

Today, the Prison Policy Initiative released two new briefings and a brand new way to access useful data about incarceration in your state.

We released:

• Breaking Down Mass Incarceration in the 2010 Census: State-by-State Incarceration Rates by Race/Ethnicity, by Leah Sakala
• Tracking State Prison Growth in 50 States, by Peter Wagner

Also today, we launched 50 state profiles (and a national one) giving you one-click access both to the findings of these two new briefings and to the highlights of all of our work over the last 13 years on each state:

All told, we produced 316 new graphs for you to use, including these two never-seen-before graphs from the U.S. profile page:

As we explain on our national profile page,

With over two million people behind bars at any given time, the United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world.

We spend about $82.4 billion every year — not to mention the significant social cost — to lock up nearly 1% of our adult population. To be able to evaluate this policy choice, our communities must have access to reliable and up-to-date information about the trajectory and scope of our nation's experiment with mass incarceration. With this page, and the accompanying 50 State Incarceration Profile series, we hope bring some of the most important and under-discussed national facts into the public discourse.

Paying the price of mass incarceration

Data show that the U.S’s incarceration tab in 2010 came out to a whopping $82.4 billion. Which is actually a serious underestimate.

by Leah Sakala, May 23, 2014

While working on an upcoming report, I set out to find the answer to a relatively straightforward question: What is the direct fiscal cost of incarceration in the United States?

The answer, it turns out, was not readily available. So I started to pull some sources. Here’s what I found for correctional expenses in 2010:

• States spent $48.5 billion
• The federal Bureau of Prisons spent $6.2 billion
• Local governments spent $27.7 billion.

This means that the U.S.’s incarceration tab in 2010 came out to a whopping $82.4 billion.

That’s a lot of money, but it’s also a significant underestimate for two important reasons:

1. This figure does not include expenses related to law enforcement, courts, or other pieces of the mass incarceration pie, such as the immigration detention system.
2. This figure also does not include the huge and unquantifiable social price of overcriminalization, which falls on the shoulders of families, communities, and future generations.

Mass. anti-shackling bill signed into law

Governor extends ban on draconian restraints to all state and local correctional facilities.

by Joe Mirkin, May 21, 2014

Thanks for stopping by this morning and guest-blogging, Joe! -PPI

Last week, Governor Deval Patrick signed an anti-shackling bill into law, making Massachusetts the 21st state to abolish the harmful and brutal practice of restraining incarcerated women who are pregnant, in labor, or in the post partum period.

(Read the Governor’s press release here)

The bill, S.2063, “An Act to Prevent Shackling and Promote Safe Pregnancies for Female Inmates, “also takes great strides towards establishing a “minimum level of care that must be afforded to pregnant inmates in county correctional facilities.”

While previous anti-shackling rules only applied to state prisons, the new law covers all corrections facilities in Massachusetts.

We strongly agree with Marianne Bullock, of the Prison Birth Project, when she said, “The next step is ensuring that this law is enforced.” We will continue, alongside fellow members of the Massachusetts Anti-Shackling Coalition, to advocate against any continuation of the practice following the passage of this law.

Our thanks and congratulations go out to all coalition members!

Members of the Massachusetts Anti-Shackling Coalition Include:

ACLU of Massachusetts, American Friends Service Committee of Western MA, Black and Pink, Boston Area Rape Crisis Center, Boston Feminists for Liberation, Casa Myrna, Civil Liberties and Public Policy, Coalition for Effective Public Safety, Dismas House—Worcester, Families for Justice as Healing, Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project, Health Care for All, Health Law Advocates, Hollaback! Boston, Jane Doe Inc—the MA Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, Jewish Alliance on Law and Social Action, JRI Health, The Law Offices of Howard Friedman, The Massachusetts Chapter of the National Organization for Women, Mount Holyoke Students Against Mass Incarceration, NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts, National Lawyers Guild, Massachusetts Chapter, Out Now—Springfield, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, Pretrial Working Group, Prison Birth Project, Prisoners’ Assistance Project at NUSL, Prisoners’ Legal Services, Prison Policy Initiative, Real Cost of Prisons Project, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Stern, Shapiro, Weissberg and Garin, LLP, And Still We Rise, Unitarian Universalist Urban Ministry, The Women’s Bar Association of Massachusetts, Worcester Homeless Action Committee.

The Mothers Day Phone Rip-Off

This Mother's day, hundreds of thousands of kids won't be able to call their mothers, and if Mom calls them, those kids are going to have a hard time paying for the call if she calls them.

by Peter Wagner, May 9, 2014

This Mother’s day, hundreds of thousands of kids won’t be able to call their mothers, and if Mom calls them, those kids are going to have a hard time paying for the call if she calls them. Incarcerated mothers — and most incarcerated women are parents of children — can’t receive phone calls but instead need to do the calling.

Who calls who wouldn’t be important if incarcerated moms could choose between an unlimited long distance plan and free Skype like most people do. Instead, incarcerated mothers have to use the monopoly vendor selected by their prison or jail; and the prison or jail generally selects the company that offers the highest kickback commission from the call.

You can see where this is going. The calls are expensive. The “good” news is that the Federal Communications Commission recently capped the maximum rate that can be charged for an interstate call at 21 or 25cents a minute. (Yes, people in prison live in a world where they might be lucky to make 25cents an hour from their job in the prison and where they celebrate the federal government lowering the cost of a call from $1/minute to 25cents.) But about 80% of kids with incarcerated parents won’t benefit from those new price caps because most calls home from prison are in-state calls not subject to the new price caps.

We need to work together to ensure that this is the last Mothers Day where families need to choose between putting food on the table and telling Mom how much she is missed and loved.

Sourcing: The Bureau of Justice Statistics report Parents in Prison and Their Minor Children is a goldmine of information about incarcerated parents and their minor children in state and federal prison, including detail about frequency of visits and other contact, that most they lived together with their kids when they were arrested, etc. Regarding the use of “hundreds of thousands” in this post, the BJS report says that in 2007, there were 131,000 minor children who had a mother in state prison, 16,400 who had a mother in state prison. Not included in that study were jails, which are an important but often overlooked 30% of the mass incarceration pie.

Univ. of Illinois: Renew scholar and writer James Kilgore’s contract

by Peter Wagner, May 5, 2014

I was saddened to learn that my friend and colleague James Kilgore, a scholar and writer on race and justice issues, was the subject of a series of attack pieces focused on his decades-old criminal record from the 1970s. I was shocked, however, when shortly thereafter the University of Illinois suddenly refused to renew Mr. Kilgore’s contract as a lecturer in the Department of Global Studies despite his stellar performance reviews by faculty and students alike.

The University of Illinois was fully aware of Mr. Kilgore’s history during the hiring process, and has greatly benefited from Mr. Kilgore’s scholarship for more than three years. As a petition signed by more than 300 University of Illinois faculty members states, the decision to not renew Mr. Kilgore’s contract,

…represents a serious blow to academic freedom and employment equity. The University should not base employment decisions on outside political pressure. Furthermore, faculty and staff contracts should be renewed based on performance and programmatic needs, not on a person’s political or criminal background.

We submitted our own letter to Chancellor Phyllis Wise urging her to renew Mr. Kilgore’s contract. Please add your voice to the call by signing the petition on change.org.

Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie Twitter Recap

More than 3,300 people have liked the graphic on Facebook and more than 1,100 people around the world have tweeted about the graphic on Twitter.

by Sadie Gold-Shapiro, May 5, 2014

In preparation for this year’s Pi Day (3/14), Prison Policy Initiative released the report “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie,” which features a graphic that answers the question “How many people are locked up in the United States?” The response has been overwhelming; to date, more than 3,300 people have liked the graphic on Facebook and more than 1,100 people around the world have tweeted about it on Twitter.

The graphic is the first of its kind to compile data from multiple sources in order to give an accurate count of the current incarcerated population of the United States. As Sara Mayeux, creator of the Prison Law Blog, tweets:

great graphic from @PrisonPolicy breaks down in one place how many are behind bars in America, where, & why: http://t.co/TUzgVo1DjF

— sara mayeux (@saramayeux) March 13, 2014

Rebecca McCray, a criminal justice writer and former ACLU staff member tweets:

As someone who has spent hours sifting through Bureau of Justice Stats, this is so appreciated. Thanks @PrisonPolicy! http://t.co/iF1tIh3UiO

— Rebecca McCray (@rebeccakmccray) March 14, 2014

The National Academies scrutinizes mass incarceration

Among the findings is that "the evidence of political inequities in redistricting due to the way the U.S. Census Bureau counts prisoners is 'compelling'"

by Leah Sakala, May 2, 2014

This week the National Research Council of the National Academies released a major report, The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences. The report was released by the Committee on Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration —which includes PPI board member and Temple University Professor Heather Thompson — and offers wealth of information in a comprehensive

summary of what is known today about the sources of the rise of incarceration in the United States; how it has affected people, communities, and society; and the implications of that knowledge for public policies determining future rates of incarceration. (p. 18)

We’re particularly excited to see that the report’s section on “Wider Consequences for U.S. Society” repeated the National Research Council’s previous conclusion that prison gerrymandering is a concern: “The evidence of political inequities in redistricting due to the way the U.S. Census Bureau counts prisoners is ‘compelling'” (p. 310).

Congratulations Leah Sakala

Leah Sakala will be attending graduate school at Brandeis, and we are hiring a Policy and Communications Associate.

by Peter Wagner, April 29, 2014

I am pleased to announce that a long-time member of the PPI team, Policy Analyst Leah Sakala, will be this fall attending the Masters of Public Policy Program at Brandeis University. Leah has worked full time with PPI for three years, and prior to that, another three years part-time while she was an undergraduate at Smith College.

PPI has grown by leaps and bounds since Leah first joined us in 2008. She’s helped us develop new ways to explain our work, new ways to share our findings and helped us tackle new issues. Much of Leah’s work has been transformative behind the scenes, but she’s most well known for some of her reports. She is the author of Return to Sender: Postcard-only Mail Policies in Jail, which the National Institute of Corrections called “required reading for policy makers and anyone working with individuals in jail custody.” She also co-authored Reaching too far, coming up short: How large sentencing enhancement zones miss the mark, Please Deposit All of Your Money: Kickbacks, Rates, and Hidden Fees in the Jail Phone Industry, and Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie.

She’ll remain full-time with us through June 20th, and after taking some much deserved time off and starting her new graduate school program, she’ll be returning this fall to us one day a week as a Senior Policy Analyst.

And yes, since Leah will no longer be working full time at the Prison Policy Initiative, there is a new employment opportunity opening up. We’ve posted an opening for a Policy & Communications Associate. Please spread the word, and if you think the position is for you, please apply.

In the mean time, please congratulate Leah on her next steps at Brandeis!

Massachusetts women need more services, not more jail cells

Bill H.1434 proposes to build a whole new "Women's Pretrial Facility." More jail cells should never be the first response to overcrowding problems.

by Leah Sakala, April 25, 2014

Yesterday we submitted testimony in opposition of Massachusetts bill H.1434, which would build a new jail in Middlesex County specifically for women who are awaiting trial and thus haven’t been convicted.

It’s true that we’re facing some pretty serious overcrowding problems here in Massachusetts, and that continuing to cram more women into MCI Framingham is by no means a solution. But throwing taxpayer money into building new jail cells for women who are just waiting for their trial dates isn’t a smart or sustainable solution either. As we explained to the Joint Committee on The Judiciary:

Many people who are in pretrial detention are incarcerated only because they lack sufficient funds to pay their own bail fees, which are sometimes as little as $500. It would irresponsible and misguided for the Legislature to invest millions of Massachusetts taxpayers’ dollars in constructing a facility that is designed to confine women who simply cannot afford to buy their freedom while they await trial.

We know that reforming our bail and sentencing policies, relying on already-existing methods of reducing the number of people in jail, and investing in community services would all be a far more healthy, humane, and efficient ways to solve the overcrowding problem.

If you are a Massachusetts resident and want to weigh in on jail expansion in our state, you can contact your legislator, too.