Law Prof Mark Godsey of CrimProfBlog writes about the difficulties the innocent imprisoned face when going before a parole board. Parole boards want you to 'fess up. It's a sign to them that the rehabilitation process has begun. Many won't grant parole to those who continue to deny the crime. But what if you really didn't do it? Tough.

Just as tough to take is Monday's California Supreme Court decision holding that parole boards can deny parole based solely on the seriousness of the crime. In other words, the court has decided it's okay to withhold the carrot and just give prisoners the stick. This renders the concept of rehabilitation a complete nullity. The board can deny even the model prisoner.

While that may be a good thing when we're talking about Charles Manson, it's another story for someone like Leslie Van Houten. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. California's prison system is in a horrible state of crisis and the state just took away one of the only incentives prisoners have for abiding by the rules-- a hope of early release for good behavior.

And if you don't agree with me about Van Houten, then what if it's an innocent person convicted of a horrible murder or brutal rape? The parole board now has the court's blessing to decide that nothing that inmate does while incarcerated will get him out early.

California prison officals allegedly lied when they told the U.S. Surpreme Court that California's prisoners were not segregated by race.

Correctional officers and inmates told The Press-Enterprise of Riverside that segregation is rampant throughout the system, despite state attorneys' contention that it is limited to inmates' first 60 days behind bars.

"There is no way I'd put a white and a black together," said Charles Hughes, a lieutenant at California State Prison in Lancaster. "I'd be putting my job on the line if I did that."

The LA Times has a long article on jail food. If the thought of doing time doesn't seem like a big deal to you, it might after you read this. County jails, where people go for more minor crimes, may be the worst, although maximum security is no picnic either.

One problem is the budget. California's county jails allot $2.25 per day per inmate. The state prison is $2.45 and the feds fork over $2.78).

Think about eating something that is made in batches for 17,000, as do the inmates in LA county jails.

[the] inmate crew stirred 100-gallon kettles of carrots and beans with paddles big enough to row a boat. Although it was late morning, the vegetables were for dinner, the jail's only hot meal.

....In the kitchen, inmate laborers washed the remains of instant mashed potatoes from bathtub-size kettles. Pans of the potatoes were stocked in walk-in "quick chill" refrigerators. Quick chilling allows the prison to start meals two days in advance. The food is cooked, then "blast cooled" in the refrigerators to within a few degrees of freezing. On serving day, it is reheated.

This reaction from an inmate doing life is probably typical:

"If I don't eat, I don't survive, but it's not like I look forward to it," he said. "After so many years you get immune to it. You just swallow."

This from today's Buffalo News....

The Bush administration plans to eliminate a shock incarceration program that many considered a progressive way to help first-time offenders avoid long federal prison terms. While no formal announcement has been made, Carla Wilson, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman in Washington, confirmed Friday that the 14-year-old Intensive Confinement Program will be discontinued.

....The program was designed for younger, nonviolent, first-time convicts who faced no more than 30 months in federal prison. Those who qualified spent six months in an intensive "boot camp" that provided strict discipline, job training and counseling, followed by time in a community halfway house and home confinement.

At least one federal judge is angry. We expect more to have the same reaction - as will many professionals working within the system.

It's not like these inmates have money to spare, nonetheless, they are doing their part to help the Tsunami victims.

Some 800 Malaysian prisoners, including those awaiting execution, have dipped into their savings to help victims of the tsunami disaster, officials said. The total of around RM3,000 may be paltry but it was a major sacrifice for the inmates at the Taiping Prison in Perak, said Prison Director Narander Singh.

"The money is what they have saved to help them start a new life after being released. But they decided to donate that money after reading about the plight of the victims," he told AFP.

Last week we noted that few Americans ever see the inside of a prison. A new art exhibition by Fiona Tan at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago brings viewers one step closer.

The brochure that goes along with the exhibition says, "Tan is interested not in making political proclamations or judgments with this work but in making visible a distinct segment of society that becomes invisible." But Tan's visual confrontation does exactly what good political art should do: it holds the viewer accountable to his or her own humanity. There's no shame in that.

These moving portraits seem to ask, "Why have you forgotten me? Do I look too much like your neighbor? Do I look like you? And what if I do look like you? Does that mean there's something criminal about you too?" What makes these images particularly riveting at this moment in history is that they come from a world we're not supposed to see. The question they pose is: What might we see that makes us afraid to look?

Here's a description of the exhibit, which Tan made at two men's prisons and two women's facilities in Illinois and California. She filmed about 300 inmates and guards, all of whom volunteered to be in the project.

The Washington Post keeps the story alive of Bush's grinch-like pardons alive. Quoted today is Law Prof Doug Berman, who is also the author of the awesome Blakely blog, Sentencing Law and Policy.

"He continues not to view his role as chief executive as one where he should temper the justice handed out by the justice system with mercy," said Douglas A. Berman, an Ohio State University law professor who studies presidential pardons. "This really is a stingy view of things, especially given how much larger our federal justice system is now" than it was in years past.

Pardon expert Margy Love says:

"What President Bush has done, to my personal way of thinking, is approach the use of his pardon power with no theory other than to stay safe," said Margaret Love, a Washington lawyer who served as federal pardon attorney, heading the government's screening of clemency petitions, between 1990 and 1997.

So what's wrong with playing it safe?

Don't miss this New York Times editiorial on mandatory minimum sentencing and on why politicians need to keep the prisons full.

Seldom has a public policy done so much damage so quickly. But changes in the draconian sentencing laws have come very slowly. That is partly because the public thinks keeping a large chunk of the population behind bars is responsible for the reduced crime rates of recent years. Studies cast doubt on that theory, since they show drops in crime almost everywhere - even in states that did not embrace mandatory minimum sentences or mass imprisonment. In addition, these damaging policies have done nothing to curb the drug trade.

Prison should be saved for the violent offenders who pose a serious threat to others. It should not be used as a panacea for all of society's ills. The Times also takes on the booming private prison industry - and the practice of counting inmates as residents of a county for political purposes, even though they are denied the right to vote while incarcerated:

by TChris

TalkLeft recently called attention to the stingy pardon practices of two Georges: Pataki and Bush. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger merits at least mild praise for the pardons he granted to three drug offenders who (according to his proclamation) "turned their lives around through hard work and public service and years later are pillars of their communities." Three is not a generous number -- c'mon Governor, it's Christmas! -- but it beats the number pardoned during all the years Gray Davis was in office: zero.

A statistical breakdown has been performed on the 440 inmates doing time in New York under the Rockefeller drug laws who may be eligible for release when the new law goes into effect (referred to as A-1 felons.) Bottom line: They differ in several ways from both the general prison population and lower-level drug offenders.

There is a greater percentage of A-1 felons born abroad, particularly in the Dominican Republic, as compared to the general prison population. There are more hispanics and fewer blacks than in the general population. For example, 1/3 of the A-1 inmates are black while 50% of the general population and 60% of low level drug offenders are black. Only 8% of A-1's are white--there is a greater percentage of whites in the general population.

Experts disagree on the reason for the disparate numbers. The only good news is that there are fewer A-1 inmates these days.

Chicago Sun Times columnist Carol Marin tells you why you should visit a prison. That's where I'm headed for the rest of the day, but her reasons are non-legal and very sound. Educate yourselves. See where your money goes. Learn why you should care:

Yesterday we criticized New York Governor George Pataki for his grinch-link approach to pardons. Today, Law Prof Doug Berman of Sentencing Law and Policy and Orin Kerr of Volokh Conspiracy take Bush to task for his meager handouts.

Update: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit says:

I can understand being gun-shy after the Clinton debacle, but using the pardon power to mitigate injustices in the system is part of the job. Being careful is one thing; shirking is another.

Update: We wrote about Bush's stingy pardon record back in March, 2004 after reading an enlightening LA Weekly article about Bush's grant of a pardon to a wealthy, dying man who just happened to be a top contributor to his campaign and who had been convicted in a $25 million fraud scheme--see also, here and here . From the LA Weekly Article: