Thanks to Craig Cheslog of Political Parrhesia for sending us to Pat Nolan's commentary in today's Washington Times, Prison Rape: It's No Joke.

With Congress back in session, another bill needs your support. "Sens. Kennedy and Sessions and Reps. Wolf and Scott have teamed up to sponsor the "Prison Rape Reduction Act of 2002," S. 2619 and H.R. 4943, which would establish standards for investigating and eliminating rape, and hold the states accountable if they fail to do so. " Here is TalkLeft's earlier description of and support for the bill.

Mr. Nolan, president of the Justice Fellowship, a non-profit group based in Reston, Va., also sums the situation up quite well:

"Experts estimate that at least one in 10 inmates is raped in prison. Because 95 percent of prisoners will eventually be released back into our communities, the horrors that occur inside prison have consequences for the rest of us, too."

"As troubling as the incidence of rape is, equally disturbing is the attitude of many government officials who are indifferent to it. When asked about prison rape, Massachusetts Department of Correction spokesman Anthony Carnevales said, "Well, that's prison . . . I don't know what to tell you." In that offhand remark, he was expressing what many feel in their hearts but are loathe to admit — "they deserve it."

"But they don't deserve it. Regardless of the crimes they have committed, no offender's sentence includes being raped while in the custody of the government."

"Winston Churchill said that the manner in which a society treats criminals "is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country." As Congress rushes to complete its work before the election recess, it is important that they take the time to deal with the scandal of prison rape, and, in doing so, meet Churchill's test of a civilized society."

In Texas, teenage girls are being arrested for violent crimes at an increased rate. State facilities are overwhelmed. The same trend is occurring nationally.

While the debate as to "why" rages on, the juvenile justice system is struggling to cope. "Defense attorney Laura Peterson says she has "to be a lot more of a social worker because there are so few services for girls."

The article offers an in-depth look at the problem.

Two pregnant Colorado inmates lost their babies allegedly due to poor medical care in the state prison system. Federal lawsuits are pending. David Lane, the lawyer for one of the women, calls the situation "a national scandal."

The female prison population is increasing. So is the number of pregnant inmates. Medical care for them has not been rising at the same rate.

The horror stories of the two women are described in detail in the article. While prison authorities maintain they are "proud" of the level of care they provide, we wonder how they can say that with a straight face.

The state has already paid $50,000. to one of the women and fired the nurse-practitioner who treated her. The state prison's chief doctor had this to say about her care in his official report: "I feel that the care rendered this patient was below any minimal level of competency."

The fired nurse-practitioner changed her name and is still working in nursing, currently at a nursing home. Her lawyer defends her actions.

Suing the prisons is no easy task. In one of the cases, where the inmate suffered a still birth due to the allegedly incompetent (some would say criminal) care received, David Lane has had to ask federal Judge John Kane "to declare unconstitutional a 1996 federal law, the Prison Litigation Reform Act, that changed what prisoners can sue over."

"It says if a prisoner wants to file a civil rights lawsuit under the Eighth Amendment (which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment), there must be some physical injury," Lane said. "They can psychologically torture any prisoner they want to."

"I mean," Lane said, "not having trained staff on duty when you have inmates going into labor? Come on."

We agree. And Judge Kane, no stranger to prison reform issues, may just be the Judge to do so.

The Second Circuit has decided that prisoners have no right to privacy in their prison cells.

"Finding that a "convict has no expectation of privacy in his prison cell," despite the fact that the search is unrelated to the legitimate needs of institutional security, the 2nd Circuit upheld the dismissal of a civil rights action brought by George Willis in Willis v. Artuz, 00-176. "

The leading Supreme Court case on the issue is Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517 (1984) which ruled "society is not prepared to recognize as legitimate any subjective expectation of privacy that a prisoner might have in his prison cell ... "

Yet, after that, the Second Circuit ruled for a prisoner in United States v. Cohen, 796 F. 2d 20 (2d Cir. 1986).

So how did the Second Circuit distinguish the Willis case to rule against him? On the grounds that Cohen was a pre-trial detainee and Willis had already been convicted. So, the ruling is a pre-trial detainee still has a right of privacy in his prison cell while a convicted prisoner does not.

Sure, we know all about the legal differences between those who are convicted and those merely charged with a crime. But in this context, we think it is splitting hairs and a distinction without a difference.

The Justice Policy Institute has released a new study that finds a dramatic rise in black male inmates since 1980.

"The number of black men in jail or prison has grown fivefold in the past 20 years, to the point where more black men are behind bars than are enrolled in colleges or universities..."

"The increase in the black male prison population coincides with the prison construction boom that began 1980. At that time, three times more black men were enrolled in institutions of higher learning than behind bars, the study said. "

The Criminal Justice Policy Foundation (CJPF) today published the nation's first compilation of state-by-state and federal information on executive clemency for prisoners at its Web site .

From their press release:

"There are about 1.3 million incarcerated persons now serving state sentences and 120,000 sentenced federal prisoners. Tens of thousands of persons are serving a sentence longer than is just, because of mandatory minimum sentencing or other injustices.

These problems have been dramatized by Bob Herbert of The New York Times this summer in six columns describing unjust drug prosecutions in Tulia, Texas, and the inordinately long sentences that resulted. Many plead guilty to avoid decades-long sentences. Those who plead guilty are almost never able to appeal their sentences -- even if they are, in fact, innocent. Receiving an excessively long sentence is not a basis for an appeal. For such prisoners, often the only remedy is executive clemency.

CJPF provides information on the procedure to obtain clemency and commutation of sentence in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, as well as the federal procedure. It gives prisoners, their attorneys and their families the information they need to apply for an early release from a state or federal prison sentence. Sample application forms are provided for some states and the federal government."

Sounds to us like a great resource.

A new report from the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics was released this afternoon. Probation and in the United States, 2001 has some disturbing figures.

The ever-increasing prison and correctional population in the U.S. reached 6.6 million at the end of 2001.

That means 1 of every 32 adults in America is now in prison, on probation or on.

The bulletin, "Probation and in the United States, 2001," was written by BJS statistician Lauren E. Glaze. Single copies may be obtained by calling the BJS Clearinghouse at 1-800-732-3277.

The full report is available online here.

As to what it all means:

"The overall figures suggest that we've come to rely on the criminal justice system as a way of responding to social problems in a way that's unprecedented," said Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, an advocacy and research group that favors alternatives to incarceration. "We're setting a new record every day."

More stats:

"Texas had more adults under correctional supervision than any other state, 755,100. California was second with 704,900. Texas also had the most adults on probation, 443,684, followed by California at 350,768."

"Whites accounted for 55 percent of those on probation, while blacks made up 31 percent, statistics show. On the other hand, 46 percent of those incarcerated were black and 36 percent were white."

The number of women on probation and also increased.

Update: Instapundit took the words right out of our mouth but says them far more eloquently and persuasively than we could:

"How many people have to be under direct supervision of law enforcement before you have a police state? Whatever the number is, at the current rate of growth it won't take us long to get there. According to these DOJ figures one out of 32 American adults -- over three percent of the population -- is in jail, on, or on probation. This represents a whopping forty-nine percent increase over the last ten years. Most of this growth appears to come from nonviolent drug offenses. Another example of how the Drug War is leading -- in this case directly, not metaphorically -- to the creation of a police state.

Okay, I don't want to go over the top. But really -- prisons are hellholes for the most part. And some people deserve to be in hellholes. But not all that many. Certainly not this many. I think that future historians will look back on this mass imprisonment the way we look on the internment of Japanese-American citizens in World War Two."

Joe Loya is an inmate in the federal system. He had a chance encounter with Charles Keating while Keating was being escorted to his first shower at the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles. Keating later went to a "Club Fed" and Loya was sent to do his time at the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, PA.

Loya writes his perceptions of the punishment white collar offenders like Keating, Boesky, Milliken, etc. receive. His memoir is scheduled to be published by Harper Collins next fall.

Loya is not persuaded things will change with the current wave of corporate malfeasance. Here's a portion of his article, originally published in the LA Times, then by Pacifica News Service and now on Alternet.

"Middle-class Americans say they want to see greedy, dishonest CEOs punished. But in truth, middle-class Americans are more afraid of boys from the housing projects holding them up in an alley for 20 bucks than they are of Wall Street scoundrels gutting their pensions and portfolios.

Middle-class jurors and judges see something of themselves in the fallen rich. Men like Keating and Milken and former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay reflect the deepest dream of the middle-class -- wealth. Main Street finds Wall Street highly seductive.

The average prisoner understands this instinctively, which is why the men at the Metropolitan Detention Center delighted in intimidating Keating.

The moral panic about corporate America will subside. The average American will finally notice that the CEOs don't resemble the drug pushers, child abductors or terrorists on the nightly news. And just that quickly, CEOs will be fined nominally, given a year or two in Club Fed and allowed to keep their fortunes.

One day, some of them may even become famous philanthropists."

If you would like to correspond with Joe Loya, his email address is included in the Pacifica article.

Last week we pointed to a letter published in the Baltimore Sun that was written by Dianne Davenport, a detainee at the Baltimore City Jail for Women. Her description of the treatment she and other women endure at the jail is horrific, and if you didn't read it last week, you should now, before it goes offline.

We are pleased to report that someone has listened to Dianne. U.S. District Judge Andre Davis today ordered all 570 of the women to be screened for illness within 24 hours. He also ordered the women of heightened risk from the excessive heat to be moved from the jail. Temperatures in the jail, built in 1859, have reached 110 degrees this summer.

Battling jails and prisons over conditions is tough duty. And Judge Davis' Order today was "a huge step," according to Raj Goyle, a Maryland ACLU attorney. Judge Davis also deserves credit for the swiftness of his ruling--the story first made the paper on August 1 when lawyers filed suit over the prison conditions. Dianne's letter appeared August 10, and today he made the ruling.

Interesting article today on a new study that finding that better medical care decreases the murder rate

"Improvements in emergency care over the past 40 years have helped to dramatically lower the death rate among assault victims by nearly 70 percent and, in the process, decrease the nation's murder rate."

"People who would have ended up in morgues 20 years ago are now simply treated and released by a hospital, often in a matter of a few days said Anthony R. Harris, a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, who headed the statistical study with Harvard Medical School that looked at crime data from 1960 to 1999."

Prison terms for murder are significantly higher than those for attempted murder, assault with intent to kill, etc.

In the long run, this is good economic news. It costs more to imprison someone for life, especially without, than it does for a term of say 20 years. And when the inmates get old, we have to foot the bill for their increasing medical costs.

The POPS project is part of a national effort to focus on elderly prisoners, a growing segment of the U.S. prison population. The project addresses the special problems of these prisoners, as well as the concerns that the 'graying' of America's prisons pose for the nation in the future, through legislative reform measures and advocating for qualified older prisoners.

POPS legislation has been adopted in a number of states, and POPS has successfully petitioned boards for the release of elderly prisoners who have gone on to lead productive lives within the community. The programs are usually run through law school clinics, e.g., those at George Washington and University of Michigan.

No POPSe has ever committed a recidivist act.

Dianne Davenport is a detainee at the Baltimore City Detention Center for Women. She has been there for eleven months, contracted TB and that's the least of the problems. Here is her account as published yesterday in the Baltimore Sun--these women are living a nightmare and it is truly an abomination that we treat human beings this way.

Florida's Death Row inmates have filed a class action lawsuit in protest of the excessive temperatures in their cells.

The inmates say "temperatures routinely top 100 degrees in their cells, forcing them to stand in toilets, drape themselves in wet towels and sleep naked on concrete floors." The inmates and their lawyers say the "dungeon like conditions" violate the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The suit was filed in 2000. A federal judge has toured the prison and indicated he will rule "later this year."

The state's response: No hurry, it borders on a frivolous lawsuit, no need to turn the temperature down in there.

But "court documents show 30 prisoners sought medical treatment from June through September 2000 and 18 for the same period in 2001 for symptoms of faintness, nausea, headache, apprehension, dizziness, irritability, weakness, unsteady gait, or excessive thirst and hunger."

"It's just a matter of time before someone dies," said one lawyer.

We agree with the prisoners' contention, "Subjecting inmates, who are confined in their cells nearly all the time, to temperatures almost always in excess of 90 degrees, frequently in excess of 100 degrees, and as high as 110 degrees, can only be called physically barbarous."

How about fans as temporary relief? No, the state says "the electrical system could not support 300 individual fans."