Wednesday, December 3, 2008

THE HIGH COST OF “PRISON DISCIPLINE”

Dateline Wednesday, November 26, 2008

THE HIGH COST OF “PRISON DISCIPLINE”

“Inmate X” is a prisoner serving ten years in a Florida prison. He has mental health problems, and takes medication for his bipolar disorder. Sometimes the prison is locked down, and Inmate X doesn’t get his meds, causing him to become “disruptive.” He yells for the correctional officer to come to his cell, tells “Officer Y” he needs his meds NOW!
Officer Y doesn’t like Inmate X. He has never been trained to deal with prisoners with psychological disorders who are required to take psychotropic drugs to control their behavior, and he takes it personally that Inmate X is talking to him in a loud voice. He tells Inmate X to shut up, or he will pepper spray him. Inmate X’s bipolar disorder kicks in, and tells Officer Y where to put his pepper spray.
Rather than call the psychologist on duty to come deal with Inmate X’s “psychological emergency.” Officer Y carries through with his threat and douses Inmate X with pepper spray. He then calls for backup, a “cell extraction team” with a riot shield enters Inmate X’s cell, pounds on him for a few minutes, chains his hands and feet, throws him in a “strip cell” for a few days and writes him “disciplinary reports” for disorderly conduct, disobeying a direct order, and assault.
Inmate X is found guilty, is sentenced to several months in lockup, in “disciplinary confinement,” and loses all his accumulated “gain time.”
What do the taxpayers of Florida lose? An estimated $78,000 in the increased costs of keeping Inmate X in prison longer due to the lost gain time, about 1200 days, that he would have otherwise been awarded had the incident with Officer Y been handled differently! And that is a conservative estimate. With 100,000 prisoners requiring a $2.7 billion annual budget, $75 a day per prisoner is a minimum figure for the costs of incarceration. For the thousands of “psych threes,” mentally-ill prisoners requiring thousands of dollars each for medication costs, and the thousands of dollars each for medication costs, and the thousands of prisoners suffering from HIV infections, hepatitis, heart disease, cancer, and other illnesses that cost the taxpayers millions of extra tax dollars, the annual costs of incarcerating one prisoner can easily reach $100,000.
Surely we can agree that maintaining discipline and order in Florida’s prisons can be a difficult, yet crucial commandment. “Care, custody, and control” are the three legs of the prison mandate. Problems develop when a certain class of “correctional officers” take their desires for “control” beyond their legislated authority and abuse their power to write “disciplinary reports” that are unwarranted, undeserved, and even false.
Perhaps it doesn’t seem like a big deal for prison administrators to give their guards a free hand in controlling prisoners, and if that means allowing some guards to be overly strict in enforcing rules, overlooking questionable actions and issuing blanket denials of grievance appeals of purportly false “D.R.s,” then so be it. And if a sizeable portion of the “D.R.s” written by a minority of these guards were “personal,” satisfying their own urges to inflict punishment, to teach someone a lesson, to bring someone down a notch, or even to jam his time, to intentionally write a bogus D.R. that will cancel a prisoner’s release on parole, in effect adding years to his sentence, so what? What’s the harm? It’s a difficult job, it’s hard to keep good people, so let them run the compound however they see fit. Right? Wrong!
What if you, the taxpayer, discovered that the unfettered writing of unwarranted or unnecessary disciplinary reports was possibly costing Floridians as much as $48.5 million to $251 million in increased costs of incarceration every year! Would you want a closer look taken at what is going on in your prisons? You betcha’!
Let’s look at the numbers. These are estimates, ball park figures, gleaned from prison staff and newspaper accounts, but more accurate numbers could be obtained from official Department of Corrections and Florida Parole Commission sources. They know exactly how many disciplinary reports are written each year, exactly how many parole dates are suspended for how many years, at what cost. For the sake of argument and enlightenment, let’s go to the ballpark, check out the scoreboard.
Florida prisons hold about 100,000 inmates. Thousands more are on deck in the county jails, waiting their turns. Let’s say those 100,000 inmates receive 50,000 disciplinary reports in a year. Some prisoners can go a year or more without receiving a D.R. Others might receive three or four at once, go to lockup, become targeted by a vengeful guard, and receive a dozen in a week, causing them to spend additional months in solitary confinement, or even get sentenced to several years of “close management” (C.M.), where they stay in extremely restricted lockdown conditions for long terms.
I’m not saying that all these D.R.s are unwarranted. There are many bad people in prison who have no intentions of mending their ways, who continue criminal activities inside, such as drug dealing, loan sharking, gambling operations, gangs, and other hustles and scams, and when they are caught with drugs, weapons, and other serious contraband, they are written up, got to lockup, rightly so. Some examples:
Two prisoners argue over a debt or a football score, get into a fight, and get D.R.s. An inmate causes a disturbance, incites a riot, he goes to jail. Cuss out a guard, refuse a lawful order, refuse to work, get caught in an “unauthorized area,” run from a guard, assault a guard, attempt to escape,--the list goes on and on. Happens all the time. “Be twenty-one,” they say, take responsibility for your own actions. But what about when you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve broken no rules, but you draw the attention of a rogue guard who has a personal dislike for you, who abuses his authority, who writes a bogus D.R., who locks you up “on the house?” What can you do? Virtually nothing usually.
Get a D.R. for “verbal disrespect,” the guard locks you up, says you cursed him, it’s your word against his, no witnesses. Who are they going to believe? You have a parole date riding on this, you file the grievances, which are rubberstamped denied. “Based on an officer’s statement” is a good one. You can file in court, circuit court, state appellate court, federal court, up the ladder, filing fees, court costs, years of time and trouble, case dismissed. Nada.
Let’s say that twenty percent of the 50,000 disciplinary reports are bogus, false, unwarranted. That’s 10,000 D.R.s. Department of Corrections staff estimate that the paperwork costs, the costs of processing one D.R. is about
$ 1,100. That’s $ 11 million of taxpayers’ money squandered right there. But that is just the tip of a very large iceberg.
On a “minor D.R.” one can lose thirty days of gain time as a penalty, not counting the possible time spent in lockup. At a minimum, the inmate loses the twenty days usual monthly gain time award for any month that they receive a D.R. That’s fifty days minimum, at $ 75 a day, or $ 3,750, plus the $ 1,100 processing costs, or $ 4850 for a minor D.R.! That’s not chicken feed. Multiply that by 10,000 and you have a minimum of $ 48.5 million squandered on D.R.s that never should have been written. Add up the costs of “major” D.R.s, where prisoners can lose 180 days of gain time, up to all accumulated gain time, possibly thousands of days, we’re talking about over $ 25,000, and more, for a bogus D.R. That’s as much as $ 250 million in taxpayer money!
Recent news reports stated that the state budget shortfall was a billion dollars or more. The prison system is looking at $ 175 million budget deficit. One suggestion to recoup some of that money is to “restore lost gain time” that was taken for D.R.s. Ding, ding, ding—are the lights flickering on? That’s a good idea, restoring lost gain time, kick them out of prison a few months early to the same release date they were originally entitled to, save millions of dollars on the costs of incarceration, having to feed them, heal them, house them. Get them out of the system, get them jobs, support their families, pay taxes. But wouldn’t it be better if there was improved and better oversight of some of these rogue officers, so that a greater percentage of unwarranted disciplinary reports were never written at all?
There is a principle called “progressive discipline” that governs how prison guards are supposed to administer discipline and correct behavior. The first step in progressive discipline is the verbal warning. A correctional officer observes a prisoner committing an infraction and verbally warns him that his behavior is wrong, counseling him not to do it again. The second step is the “corrective consultation” or c.c., generally known as a written warning, still fairly informal, but logged on a “contact card.” So many c.c.s in a month can result in a D.R. The most drastic step, the D.R., is supposedly reserved for the worst cases, when the inmate has ignored repeated calls to adjust his behavior.
There are guards who brag that they haven’t written a D.R. in years. It’s not that they are lazy, or slackers, not doing their jobs, but the opposite—they know how to talk to prisoners, they are respected, and they are obeyed. They don’t have to run in, write D.R.s, and lock people up. They give orders, and the prisoners obey them. That method of carrying out your job is better for everyone. Think of the tax savings alone.
On the other hand, certain guards are so hateful and nasty that they try to lock up someone everyday, and if the person gets angry, resulting in a “use of force,” so they can beat them or gas them, so much the better. These guards brag about having written literally hundreds of D.R.s over the years, like it’s a badge of honor, rather than an incredible waste of millions of taxpayers’ dollars, notwithstanding the human costs their victims incurred and the increase in tension among the general inmate population, increasing the danger for all. There is nothing “progressive” about their discipline. Fire them, and save millions. We can’t afford them.
If you are shocked at how much you are paying to satisfy the punitive urges of guards who regularly write bad D.R.s, wait until you hear what happens at the parole commission as a result of their actions.
“Presumptive Parole Release Date” (PPRD) is the operating term for those thousands of prisoners who are still under the authority of the Florida Parole Commission. The PPRD refers to the calculated date for a prisoner’s release on parole. This release date can be altered for “reasons of institutional conduct,” or D.R.s.
Let’s say a prisoner has served twenty years and has a 2008 parole date. He gets a bogus D.R., loses gain time, costs the state an extra $ 5,000 or so, but it doesn’t stop there.
As a result of the D.R., his PPRD can be extended two years, four years, or more. Some have served an additional ten years imprisonment because of one D.R. At $ 25,000 or so a year for cost of incarceration, that hapless soul could cost the taxpayers an extra $ 250,000 because a wrathful prison guard doesn’t like him and decided to jam his time. That’s for only one person.
In years gone by, when virtually every prisoner was under the parole system, it was a common practice for certain guards to wait until a month or so before an inmate was scheduled to go home, then plant some contraband on him, write him up, lock him up, and cause him to spend additional years in prison. Is that right? Of course not. But it still happens. Besides the moral costs to a society that doesn’t prevent such abuses by “public servants,” the financial costs, in these tough times, are too great for our fragile economy to bear.
Something should be done about it, but where do we start? Right here, right now, let’s get to the bottom of this, put a stop to it, do the right thing. It makes dollars and cents.
Charlie

5 comments:

Vox Populi said...

They rotate them in and out to harass prisoners. The same thing in elementary schools.
We haven't forgotten yall. We don't KNOW about yall. I just happened to find your blog. Theoretically we 'know' about you. There are different levels of harassment and sometimes people want to help other people. Then they try and the freaks throw up so much crap you have no choice but to change your focus.
Don't lose heart. Sounds like you are going to get some action.
Keep making noise.
How is it you are able to get online? Seniority? I think it's A CRIME that they make it so difficult for a prisoner to communicate with their family(AND COST PROHIBITIVE) but also won't let them online.

Vox Populi said...

Tell you something right NOW. That was not about the robbery. It was about wanting to kill bluffstone. The rest was all a red herring. You need to get an attorney and that is the angle. I'm sure if the janitor is still available he would remember an incident some time prior where the security guard (bluffstone) reacted and helped him. That is what was going on. It wasn't a robbery but premeditated murder.
Cut and dried.
What I'm saying is that murder of bluffstone was THE DESIRED OUTCOME not the accident it was made to appear. These same folks are involved in trying to steal my property. I've watched them do this stuff OVER AND OVER AND OVER again.
Like I said I found your website by accident. Was pretty stunned but not surprised to read the tale.
Get an attorney ... get the one who got that black guy freed.
AND, be aware of what I just told you.
I'm sick of these people trying to scare and intimdidate my family. It's like I just drove up the driveway HOME. You have NO idea what they have done to others; not just yourself.

Vox Populi said...

I'm the type wants to know everything I can. I checked your case. It's showing as open again. In my neighborhood alone I have found three people WRONGLY or EXTREMELY imprisoned in order to take their property. I noticed that there is a dan faulker who looks to be a GREAT person sticking with you all this time. I also noticed because I am RABIDLY digging through public records for my own situation (threats, poison, arrested family members, threats of such a high degree I won't ignore them, MURDER in my family, murder of my mother, etc... all of whom are people who are by the last name of roberts AND their myriad associates)
Now what was disturbing to me is that in public records there is a wingate case with a troy faulkner FNA troy roberts who sued the wingates (may not be the same people just giving you a headsup) and then settle amicably. I have no idea about who any of these folks are or if they are the same family. Haven't had time to look.
I'm going to provide the link and you can have your family look into it. Also, I cannot discern what happened to debra wadsworth. There is another link between us. I have long been in contact with the mcginleys whom someone linked up on your website.
They can't get their head around the fact that someone actually SHOVED their beloved son in front of a UPS truck on the interstate in a premeditated fashion. Just like you are not serving a sentence STILL for something you did not do. Also they have a private detective who linked up to some scary people who helped harass my family member to death in north carolina but I didn't get a chance to tell them all of that. I tried to show them that this is a MURDER CLUB. Covering up with each other for WAAAY more than thirty years. I am very curious of your connection to all of this which caused you to be arrested. It can't have been out of the blue.
Please blog any of that you can.
I'm sure your friend Dan is not related to this fellow but I am thorough and leaving this unrevealed would be a mistake.
I don't like false flags and my goal is to eliminate this one.
Also, the fellow who moved into my neighborhood to help intimidate me out of my property (they've SHOT AT ME and poisoned my animals and etcccc) came out mincing around his property which is his way of saying SHUT UP just as soon as I posted on your blog.
Anyway, here's the link. Don't discount the fact that someone claiming to help you could be a plant from the other side.
Sorry I know you have enough to worry about but I sat helpless in the mcginley's living room while thier false flag sat right next to the wife and intimidated me with her eyes and actions.
I think the mcginleys will eventually catch on . The lies are falling away.
Okay, one last time, here's the faulker/roberts/wingate link. Just for your perusal.
(and please allow me to reiterate, I don't believe there is any connection with YOUR mr. faulkner but it IS odd, deserves a look AND has that 'roberts' connection to wingate which ties them to a RICO case that I am eventually filing)
It's WAY WAY more than an odd coincidence however that I have been stalked by sheriffs, run off the interstate one night by a dumptruck AND a sheriff on video and in front of two witnesses and so many other things that I can't begin to list them.
My blog has a bit of a filthy mouth to it. I'm not a violent person so I take my quarter where I can. Calling them as I see them in a language I'm sure they understand.
Odd how we're all finding each other through these blogs.
You'll have to forgive me. I can't get the site to open again (oooh imagine my surprise)
BUT here's the case number:96-7122-CC/division J Judge Marva Crenshaw.
Something else interesting as I peruse the PDF that I copied and have here in my docs. The kyle roberts is mentioned as esquire. So, he's an attorney.
Sorry the link above is bad and I have things to do before dark so I am in too big a hurry to fix it and it just leads back to your site which I copied to another blog you might want to have a look at. smashedfrog.blogspot.com
Wow, this has been a very weird day with the stalking roberts showing up every time I go outside and the connection to you and the wingates and the guy who lives over here.
I believe the connection is the biker club. Please confirm.

Vox Populi said...

Actually some of these roberts are the last name MASON, as well. Let me know if you know anything of that.
Extremely stupid, dangerous folks. All city employees. As a reward for setting others up for murder and/or stealing their property, perhaps?
I hope that something I've said here is helpful to you or sparks someone to a memory or another witness before they begin the coverup of same. Once I took my murdered relative's car to a mechanic and he showed me a piece of the car that had been purposely damaged in order to harm my loved one.
Probably less than a month later I was told those people were made an offer they couldn't refuse (although I'm sure it was just a good cash offer to them and voiced to me in a threatening manner) and were GONE. After being at that location for YEARS.
Murder is a big business to these folks. Instead of stopping instead they'll invest their money into covering it up.
Wow, I'm exhausted from all of this .. .. UNBELIEVABLE.

Vox Populi said...

charlie crist just promoted marva crenshaw to district court of appeals.
THIS confirms that she is part of the 'club'. The only comments in the tampa tribune initially were from someone who asked if it were a joke and from someone who had a case in front of her and bailed due to the feeling of unfairness.