Deaths in rural jails: Stories from Ala. and W.Va. highlight broken systems that seem not to protect the incarcerated

Photo by Walker County Sheriff's Office, Alabama

"Your son died in jail." Alongside the pain of taking that in, the human response is, "How? Why?" Nationwide, an unknown number of people die in jail. Relatives of those who have died in West Virginia jails "have similar stories of languishing in heartache and confusion while desperately seeking answers to what happened to their loved ones behind bars," reports Dan Lawton of Mountain State Spotlight. "Of the 52 people who died in West Virginia’s jails and prisons last year, the state hasn’t finished the investigations into 17 of them, going back as far as March."

Lawton introduces Kimberly Osborne, whose son, Ryan Scott Smith, died in his cell at Southwestern Regional Jail in December. "Over that time, she has pleaded with correctional officials, the Medical Examiner’s Office and the State Police for any scraps of information that shed light on his final moments. . . . They haven’t told her anything, except that the case is under investigation. . . . She doesn’t know when — or if — she’ll get a complete account of what happened in the hours before the jail’s warden called to tell her that her son was dead. Osbourne told Lawton, “I’m just trying to get justice for Ryan."

Like Osbourne, "The families of those who have died in jails have been met with similar responses. They make fruitless calls to agency after agency. They wait in limbo for investigations that never end, are denied records that might provide clarity and receive little to no sympathy from public officials, including Gov. Jim Justice, about their losses," Lawton reports. "While there is pending legislation intended to make what happens in the state’s jails more transparent, it may not be forceful enough to provide many families with the information they need."

In Alabama, the story of Anthony Mitchell echoes jailhouse cruelty and a code of silence, reports Sarah White-Koditschek of AL.com: "Mitchell, 33, alarmed his cousin Steve Mitchell when he showed up at his house, acting psychotic, and insisting he must enter a 'portal to hell' in his mother’s attic to retrieve the body of his long-ago stillborn brother. After a 911 call, Mitchell was picked up by sheriffs’ deputies . . . . The Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, according to the suit, told the family they’d get him medical help in Walker County Jail. Instead, guards tased Mitchell and locked him in a freezer, killing him, the suit alleges. The suit filed Monday also contends jail leadership began a cover up of Mitchell’s death hours before he died. . . 'This case,' the suit says, 'therefore presents an appalling question: how does a man literally freeze to death while incarcerated in a modern climate-controlled jail, in the custody and care of corrections officers?'”

It did not end there, "A former deputy also filed a separate, but related lawsuit. Former Corrections Officer Karen Kelly sued the Walker County Sheriff’s Office and multiple officers for being fired and for retaliation after she shared videos with Mitchell’s family of him being abused in the jail."

"Security footage from 4 a.m. that morning showed Mitchell lying naked on a pile of trash on the cement floor of his cell as officers laughed at him, according to the suit," Whites-Koditschek reports. "Video also showed jail nurse, Alicia Herron, enter the cell and spend a couple of minutes inside, appearing to give no medical treatment, according to the suit."

Whites-Koditschek adds, "Jon Goldfarb, attorney for Mitchell’s estate said the videos show correctional officers laughing as Mitchell lay naked and dying. Goldfarb told Whites-Koditschek, “This is the worst case of inmate abuse I have ever seen . . . . People who have seen these videos think they are watching something in Russia or Abu Ghraib . . . . but this happened in our own backyard in Walker County, Alabama."

Map shows which states are allowing in-person prison visits; database shows state-level impact of covid-19 in prisons

Map by The Marshall Project; click the image to enlarge it or click here for the interactive version.

Though prisons are a major vector for the novel coronavirus, some states are gradually easing restrictions on in-person visits from family and lawyers, according to The Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism outlet focused on criminal justice. The story includes an interactive map and detailed updates for where each state's corrections systems stand.

The Marshall Project, in partnership with The Associated Press, also maintains a frequently updated database showing how many people have been sickened and/or died from covid-19 in prisons, both nationwide and within each state.

It should be noted that most of this data concerns state and federal prisons only, and not local jails. However, six states have unified prison and jail systems (Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont) so in those cases, the data includes testing and case numbers from both pre-trial detainees and sentenced prisoners.

Apply by July 19 for free, expenses-paid workshop in NYC on 'cash register justice,' all about fines, fees, bail and jail

Policies of prosecutors and judges make the burden of fines, fees, bail and jail vary widely across the criminal-justice jurisdictions of the United States. Though some policies cause overcrowding of local jails, there has been relatively little reporting at the local level about such policies, and that "has helped to keep the costs, and their consequences, hidden to many Americans; and it has created a troubling gap in public understanding of the current state of our justice system," says the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of the City University of New York.

To help fill that gap, the center is conducting a two-year program of workshops for U.S. journalists. It held one workshop in March and is seeking at least 15 reporters to attend one on Sept. 26 and 27 in New York, offering to cover travel, hotel and related expenses, followed by mentoring and research assistance from center staff and experts as required. Reporters will be expected to publish or broadcast at least one story arising from their fellowship work within a reasonable time after the conference.

The selection will be based on project proposals related to the general theme of “cash register justice” that are either underway or contemplated. Applications must include a reference letter from an assigning editor or other commissioning editor who knows the applicant’s work and a short bio. (Freelancers are eligible.) Previous recipients of CMCJ reporting fellowships are eligible to apply. The deadline for applications is Friday, July 19. An application form isavailable here. Send questions to CMCJ Journalism Coordinator Maurice Possley at mauricepossley@gmail.com.

The fellowship is supported by Arnold Ventures, formerly known as the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

"Few Americans are aware that prisons and jails confine thousands of people whose main offense is that they are too poor," the center says. "Confronted with an accumulation of fees and fines associated with both felony and non-felony convictions as well as unpaid tickets and other civil penalties, they wind up behind bars in what amounts to a 21st century version of debtors’ prisons. . . .  Fines and fees imposed by local justice systems around the U.S. drive unemployment, family instability, recidivism and poverty in the most at-risk communities. Just as problematic: Two-thirds of all prison inmates have criminal justice debts, which complicates their successful reintegration into the community."

Apply by June 1 for year-long fellowship, starting with expense-paid trip to NYC, on covering rural jails and prisons

Photo by mksfly via Flickr

Jail populations are rising in rural areas, partly because prosecutors delay trials in the hope of extracting guilty pleas. Jails have also become warehouses for the mentally ill, and many are outdated and badly cramped. There is a need for more enterprise and investigative reporting on jails on rural jails and prisons, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York is trying to help with a program called "Rural (In)Justice: Covering America's Hidden Jail Crisis."

On July 10-11, the college’s Center on Media, Crime and Justice will hold a two-day conference to start a year-long fellowship program to "strengthen the capacity of journalists in rural and smaller jurisdictions to investigate the causes of the growth in jail populations, and report on policy remedies and alternatives," says the center, which will select up to 30 journalists for fellowships, which include a required, all-expense paid trip to the conference.

The conference, on the John Jay campus, "will bring journalists together with leading practitioners, researchers and officials who are involved in jail and incarceration issues for in-depth, on-the-record discussions," the center says. In the year that follows, the fellows will have online “refresher” sessions with sources and policymakers and get research assistance for their reporting projects.

The center will select fellows through a competitive process, which will give special preference to journalists in small or rural areas, or those covering state capitals. Applicants should provide biographies of 100 to 150 words, a supporting letter from a senior editor or assigning editor and a brief description of projects underway or contemplated relating to jail/rural justice issues. Freelance journalists are also eligible, as long as they fit program criteria.

Applicants are encouraged to highlight any work in progress that would benefit from their participation. Fellows will be expected to have produced for publication one or several stories related to their project proposals within six months of the conference close. Their work may be posted in The Crime Report, the center's online criminal justice news and resource network.

The deadline for applications is 11:59 p.m. Friday, June 1. Selections will be announced the following week. To apply, click here. Questions? Contact journalism coordinator Maurice Possley at mauricepossley@gmail.com or project administrator Ricardo Martinez at rmartinez@jjay.cuny.edu.

'Calls from Home' radio show connects inmates in Central Appalachian prisons with their faraway loved ones

Prisoners often get messages from loved ones in letters, but how about by radio? WMMT-FM in Whitesburg, Ky., has a unique show, "Calls From Home," that for 20 years has broadcast loved ones' recorded messages to inmates in nearby prisons. More than 5,000 men are incarcerated in six federal and state prisons in the range of WMMT, in Kentucky and Virginia.

Map shows primary signal coverage of WMMT-FM

It's no coincidence that so many prisons are located near Whitesburg. "Pitched as a new source of economic development amid coal power’s decline, prisons began sprouting up around Appalachia in the 1970s," Henry Gass reports for The Christian Science Monitor. "Most people in the community don’t have a problem with new prisons being built in the area . . . though they have grown skeptical of the promises of thousands of jobs."

However, "When prisons started coming in to the region . . . the inmate population and the local population were very much pitched against each other by the department of corrections and state officials," Rose Hackman of The Guardian reported in 2016, after interviewing Amelia Kirby, who started the program when she worked at WMMY, a service of the Appalshop arts-and-culture cooperative.

“We were told that the prisoners coming in were going to be the worst of the worst criminals. Then they were telling inmates they were coming to the last place on earth where violent and racist hillbillies lived,” Kirby told Hackman. “They really worked hard to create this kind of demonizing language. . . . We wanted to counter that narrative. The show is humanizing on both sides. It shows that we are not violent racists, and that people in prison are humans with families that love them. It’s difficult to hate someone when you hear their grandchild tell them they love them on the radio.”

Gass reports, "WMMT bills itself as 'a 24-hour voice of mountain people,' and as far as the station is concerned, if the inmates can tune in, then they are mountain people too." Elizabeth Sanders, WMMT's co-general manager and a producer of "Calls From Home," told him, "Anything we can do to help make the barriers between them and their families a little bit less, then we’re fulfilling part of our mission as the radio station here."

The radio messages are the only way some people can connect with their incarcerated loved ones because of difficulties finding transportation to the prison and the expense of calling a prison. It sometimes cost more than $10 per minute to call someone in prison until the Federal Communications Commission announced a rule in 2015 capping how much telecommunications companies can charge for such calls.

Program to help non-violent criminals get right in Georgia expands to rural areas

Non-violent criminals in remote areas of Georgia now have an opportunity to avoid jail time and enter a program to help them get their lives back on track. The state Department of Corrections already offered "intensive drug counseling and other services designed to keep probationers from reoffending," at 14 regional day-reporting centers in urban areas, but now rural offenders are getting the same opportunities to get a second chance with the opening of 11 rural centers, Adam Ragusea reports for Georgia Public Broadcasting. The program also saves the state money, with the cost of incarcerating prisoners amounting to more than $50 a day. (Ragusea photo: Probation Officer Christopher Burke talks to probationer Chet Mull, who is working on his GED)

House Bill 349, signed in April, "restores judicial discretion by allowing a departure from mandatory minimum sentences in some very limited circumstances," John Barker reports for Douglasville Patch, about 22 miles west of Atlanta. "As a result, judges now have the option to make more appropriate decisions in drug-related cases where the defendant is not the ringleader of the criminal enterprise, or in other cases where the prosecution, defense attorney and judge agree." Republican Gov. Nathan Deal said of the bill: “Public safety will be improved by giving prosecutors leverage in certain cases and by ensuring that our prison resources are reserved for the ‘kingpins’ while the ‘mules’ are given a chance at reform.”

The program, which costs $750,000 a year, allows participants to spend four days a week in group counseling, and allows officers to give individual extra attention, Ragusea writes. Ruthie Turner, a program counselor, told him, “We teach a class that helps them get ready to make a change in their lives,” by offering substance abuse programs and skills that help probationers re-enter society — “how to do a résumé, how to do a job interview, how to dress for those things." And the program has been a big success, Ragusea writes. "Of the 60 probationers who have graduated the DRC Lite program so far, corrections officials said, only three have gotten into serious trouble with the law again." To read more, or listen to the radio interview, click here.

Police officers increasingly deal with the mentally ill

Prisons are seeing an increase in the number of mentally ill inmates, and law enforcement officers are being called to more and more scenes involving the mentally ill. But many police officers aren't trained in such situations, especially now that in some areas 20 percent of the calls involve the mentally ill. The number is 40 percent in places like Newport, R.I., where in August police were called to a hotel to assist a delusional Aaron Alexis, who a month later killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard, Kevin Johnson reports for USA Today. (FBI photo: Aaron Alexis)
 
An increase in calls involving the mentally ill led officials in 1987 in Memphis to create the Crisis Intervention Team, which "offers specialized training to cadres of officers in dealing with the emotionally disturbed," Johnson writes. "It attempts to link police with mental-health professionals and community advocates to provide resources, including treatment outside the confines of prisons and jails, which have become repositories for the mentally ill." More than 2,700 other agencies have since adopted the program. Other departments, such as the one in Newport, provide their own training in dealing with the emotionally disturbed. Officials said the officers acted appropriately in dealing with Alexis, saying at the time he wasn't a harm to himself or others. (Read more)

Providing mental-health care, instead of locking up the mentally ill in prisons, has a positive impact on patients, and costs less, according to researchers at North Carolina State University, the Research Triangle Institute, and the University of South Florida, reports Science Daily. "Researchers identified 4,056 people who had been hospitalized for mental illness in 2004 or 2005 and then tracked them from 2005 to 2012." Co-author Dr. Sarah Desmarais told Science Daily, "Our research shows that people receiving medication were significantly less likely to be arrested. Outpatient services also resulted in a decreased likelihood of arrest."

Researchers also looked at costs between criminal justice and mental health treatment, Science Daily writes. "Individuals who were arrested received less treatment and each cost the government approximately $95,000 during the study period. Individuals who were not arrested received more treatment and each cost the government approximately $68,000 during the study period." Desmarais told Science Daily, "It costs about $10 less per day to provide treatment and prevent crime. That's a good investment." (Read more)

Has your local jail become a mental asylum?

"America's lockups are its new asylums," Gary Fields and Erica Phillips report for The Wall Street Journal. "After scores of state mental institutions were closed beginning in the 1970s, few alternatives materialized. Many of the afflicted wound up on the streets, where, untreated, they became more vulnerable to joblessness, drug abuse and crime."

The reporters quote Esteban Gonzalez, president of the American Jail Association, a lobby for jail employees: "In every city and state I have visited, the jails have become the de facto mental institutions." Of the 22 states that responded in detail to the reporters' survey, which as a whole have most of the nation's prisoners, "their mental-health patient ratios ranged from one in 10 inmates to one in two," the ratio reported in Oregon and Iowa.

"Some facilities have attempted to cope by hiring psychiatric staff and retraining prison officers," the Journal reports. "Few, however, claim to be adequately equipped to handle some of the nation's most mentally frail. A seeming revolving door compounds the problem: Upon their release, the mentally ill tend to find scant resources and often quickly fall back into the system, says Mr. Gonzalez." And that phenomenon is probably more prevalent in rural areas, which typically are short of mental-health resources.

The situation is a return to the times of a century or more ago, when knowledge of mental illness was rudimentary at best and the mentally ill often would up behind bars. State-run mental institutions were developed, but gave way to community-based treatment. "The weaknesses of that concept—a lack of facilities, barriers created by privacy laws and tightened local and state funding—has brought the picture full circle," the Journal reports.

Inmates graduate from technical course; mother upset her son's suspected killer is allowed in it

Six Tennessee inmates completed a unique program that in a short span of time teaches them skills they can use on the outside. But the mother of a murdered man is angry that the her son's suspected killer was allowed to take the class, saying he shouldn't be given that kind of opportunity, reports Mark Bell for the Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro, near Nashville. (Photo by Rutherford County Sheriff's Office: Inmate John Lamendola, far left, takes an electricity class.)

The beginning electricity class was the first higher-education course taught at the Rutherford County Adult Detention Center, reports the locally owned Murfreesboro Post. The families of inmates paid $300 for the course. Sheriff Robert Arnold said "inmates who completed the class learned a skill to get a decent-paying job and the ability to take care of their families." (Read more)

One of those inmates, John Lamendola, is suspecting of murdering Kevin Barrett, and assaulting and kidnapping his girlfriend. Barrett's mother, Barbara Thompson was shocked when she read the Post story, reports Bell. Thompson said of the sheriff, “I just don’t think he should be receiving praise in the newspaper for allowing someone accused of a capital murder to participate in this type of program."

Arnold defended his decision to include Lamendola, saying he is a pre-trial inmate under the jail’s classification system, and is “eligible to be released on bond, although he has been unable to make bond. If he was out on bond, he could be attending school or working a job." State Rep. Mike Sparks also defended the decision, saying thyat if “We could use this man and get him working in the jail doing maintenance, then I think that is also a cost savings.” (Read more)

Federal prisons, overcrowded and increasingly unsafe, could become more so with budget cuts

Attorney General Eric Holder says the federal budget sequester and employee furloughs could worsen safety problems in federal prisons, most of which are in rural areas. Brian Mann of North Country Radio in Saranac Lake, N.Y., notes, "Two different congressional reports released in the last year found that inmate overcrowding at federal prisons . . . has already made it difficult for guards to maintain safety behind bars."

The Congressional Research Service said there has been a "historically unprecedented" increase in inmates, and the Government Accountability Office said the overcrowding has caused higher inmate-to-staff ratios, leading to more inmate behavior problems and threats to safety. It said some prisons are holding half again as many inmates as they are designed for, and a Bureau of prisons study  said it needs 3,200 more guards, Mann reports.