Drop the Rock has partnered with the Bronx Defenders, to co-sponsor the 2010 edition of Better Ballots NY, a nonpartisan voter education guide for New York voters. The guide is produced by the Bronx Defenders’ Voter Enfranchisement Project (VEP), which is coordinated by Dawit Getachew, a dedicated Drop the Rock coalition member. VEP is “a non-partisan effort that seeks to encourage participation among historically underrepresented voters and ensure that all communities have a voice in our democracy.”

Better Ballots NY will cover candidates running for Governor and Attorney General, as well as the legislative races in New York City districts that are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system. Candidate’s responses to the Better Ballots questions will be published in the Better Ballots NY Voter Guide, which will be widely distributed via its website and partner organizations.

We urge organizations that are partners with Drop the Rock to sponsor the voter guide. Once published, we can publicize it widely and hold candidates accountable to their responses. Sponsors will promote Better Ballots NY to their members or client communities, circulate information about how to access the voter education guide, and, if possible, print out the guides for distribution.

If you have any questions about the guide or if your organization would like to sponsor Better Ballots NY, please contact Dawit Getachew at the Bronx Defenders at dawitg@bronxdefenders.org.

The 2010 Primary Election is Tuesday, September 14, 2010. The last day to send an application by mail is Friday, August 20, 2010; the last day to register in person is Friday, August 20, 2010.

The 2010 General Election is Tuesday, November 2, 2010. The last day to send an application by mail is Friday, October 13, 2010; the last day to register in person is Friday, October 8, 2010.

Are you registered to vote in New York? For information about how to register to vote in New York State, click here.  You can also register to vote online with Rock the Vote.

Click here for information about voting eligibility for people with criminal records in New York, or keep reading for a quick summary.

If you have been convicted of a felony, you can register and vote if you:

• are on probation.
• were not sentenced to prison or had your prison sentence suspended.
• served your maximum prison sentence.
• were discharged from parole.
• were pardoned.

If you have been convicted of a felony, you can not register and vote if you:

• are currently incarcerated.
• are under parole supervision.

District Day is September 24th, will we be meeting with a legislator in your neighborhood? Bring District Day to your community by registering today!

Contact Denise Thomas at 212-254-5700 x 339  or at dthomas@correctionalassociation.org to sign up for the training workshop and District Day.

This is our first District Day and it will be similar to Advocacy Day without traveling to Albany. It is an opportunity for coalition members to develop relationships with the leaders of their community and hold them accountable. Since 2010 is an election year, District Day is especially important as it will better prepare us for our next Advocacy Day in Albany and also provide the coalition with information on the most effective strategies to advance the goals of our campaign.  Download our District Day flyer to help spread the word.

Will we visit your legislative leader? Register now by contacting us with your availability for September 24th to bring District Day to your community. We will work with your schedule if you are only available to take off a portion of the day.

In preparation for District Day, Drop the Rock is hosting two Train the Trainer workshops on Thursday August 5th and Tuesday August 10th. The training will focus on the components of DTR’s platform and the kinds of public education and advocacy activities planned for the coming months. If you would like to freshen up on your presentation skills or general outreach to your community on our agenda, register today!

For more information on District Day and the Train the Trainer workshops, contact Denise Thomas, Drop the Rock Coordinator, at 212-254-5700 x.339 or dthomas@correctionalassociation.org

Federal Oversight for Troubled N.Y. Youth Prisons
By Nicholas Confessore
Published July 14, 2010

Four of New York’s most dangerous and troubled youth prisons will be placed under federal oversight, strict new limits will be imposed on the use of physical force by guards, and dozens of psychiatrists, counselors and investigators will be hired under a sweeping agreement finalized on Wednesday between state and federal officials.

The agreement will usher in the most significant expansion of mental health services in years for youths in custody, the vast majority of whom suffer from drug or alcohol problems, developmental disabilities or mental health problems.

Currently, the state does not have a single full-time psychiatrist on staff to treat young offenders.

Guards at the youth prisons, known as youth counselors, will be barred from physically restraining youths except when a person’s physical safety is threatened or a youth is trying to escape from the institution.

Guards will be allowed to use the most controversial method - in which a youth is forced to the ground and held face-down - for at most three minutes, with evaluation by a doctor to follow within four hours.

The accord comes almost a year after the Justice Department threatened to take over New York’s juvenile justice system unless the state took significant steps to rectify problems at the four prisons, where physical abuse was rampant and mental health counseling was scant or nonexistent.

“It is New York’s fundamental responsibility to protect juveniles in its custody from harm and to uphold their constitutional rights,” Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said in a statement. “We have worked cooperatively with New York officials to craft an agreement to ensure that the constitutional rights of juveniles at the four facilities are protected, and we commend New York and the New York State Office of Children and Families for their willingness to work aggressively to remedy these problems.”

Federal investigators found that staff members at the four institutions — the Lansing Residential Center and the Louis Gossett Jr. Residential Center, in Lansing, and two residences, one for boys and one for girls, at Tryon Residential Center in Johnstown — routinely used physical force to discipline the youths, resulting in broken bones, shattered teeth, concussions and dozens of other serious injuries in a period of less than two years.

Gov. David A. Paterson said in a statement, “With this historic settlement agreement, New York takes another step towards achieving true transformation of our juvenile justice system.”

Mr. Paterson, who has been trying to address problems plaguing the juvenile system, introduced legislation in June to let judges sentence youths to juvenile prisons only if they had been found guilty of a violent crime or a sex crime or were deemed to be a serious threat to themselves or others. Juvenile prisons house those convicted of criminal acts, from truancy to murder, who are too young to serve in adult jails and prisons.

The federal inquiry began in 2007 after a spate of episodes, including the 2006 death of a disturbed 15-year-old after two employees at the Tryon center pinned him down on the ground.

Two monitors, jointly chosen by federal and state officials, will oversee the state’s efforts to carry out the accord over the next two years, making regular progress reports to a federal judge, who must approve the agreement before it goes into effect.

Money for the new staffing — including a full-time psychiatrist at each of the four prisons, five licensed psychologists and more than a dozen social workers and nurse practitioners — was included in parts of the state budget already approved in Albany.

The state-federal accord, filed in United States District Court in Albany, echoes recommendations issued in December by a state task force, which found major shortcomings throughout the youth prison system. The task force recommended substantially expanding mental health care and replacing most residential youth prisons with smaller centers closer to communities where most young offenders and their families are from.

While the accord officially applies just to the four institutions cited, state officials said they hoped to use it as a springboard to seek broad changes through the juvenile system, which now houses 667 youths in 26 facilities around the state.

“It continues to move us in the right direction,” said Gladys Carrión, commissioner of the Office of Children and Family Services, which oversees the juvenile justice system. “It’s an affirmation of the work we have done already and of the recommendations of the governor’s task force.”

Ms. Carrión, who has moved aggressively in recent months to cut the number of youths in state custody and to limit the use of force by guards, said she would require all youth prisons in New York to abide by the restrictions on physical restraint. She said the state also planned to hire a chief psychiatrist in the near future to oversee drug regimens and mental health counseling at all of the state’s youth prisons.

But advocates for youths in state custody said they would continue to seek a far-reaching transformation in the juvenile justice system in New York, which they say merely warehouses youths who in most cases need intensive psychiatric care and counseling rather than being locked up.

“The changes will only affect those kids who have mental health needs who are already incarcerated,” said Gabrielle Prisco, director of the Juvenile Justice Project at the Correctional Association of New York. “It doesn’t get to the fact that any of those young people could be safely treated in their communities without ever seeing the inside of a prison cell.”

When the Police Stop and Frisk
Published July 2, 2010

To the Editor:

Heather Mac Donald misses two key points. Critics of the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics do not accuse individual officers of racial bias, but question the practice itself because of how it focuses almost entirely on minority neighborhoods.

Also, Ms. Mac Donald writes as if stop-and-frisk methods were the only effective response to unlawful acts in high-crime areas. Other police departments in the nation, like those in San Diego and Boston, have engaged in community policing strategies that have been successful in reducing crime in designated areas.

And by contrast, those approaches have helped build positive relationships between the community and the police, rather than create the kind of antagonistic and hostile attitudes in local residents that stop-and-frisk has often fostered.

It is time to cease defending the racially biased stop-and-frisk practices of the city’s Police Department and to consider other proven crime-fighting approaches.

Robert Gangi
Executive Director
Correctional Association of New York

Earlier this week, the New York Senate passed ReDirect NY, legislation that would provide fiscal incentives for localities to expand their use of alternative programs for youth. Now that the Senate has passed the bill - thanks in large part to the leadership of Senate sponsor Velmanette Montgomery and the Juvenile Justice Coalition’s advocacy efforts - it’s up to the Assembly to decide whether it will go to Governor Paterson’s desk. Assemblymember William Scarborough, the bill’s sponsor in that house, has been a staunch advocate for the bill, but he needs our help.

Please click here to email your Assemblymember and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and ask them to support ReDirect New York (Scarborough/A10253).  It takes just a moment, and could make all the difference.

After you’ve emailed your Assemblymember, mark your calendars for the Bronx Defenders’ Community Block Party on Wednesday, June 30.  Members of our coalition will be there to spread the word about our prison downsizing campaign and to connect with our community.

EVENT DETAILS:
BRONX DEFENDERS’ COMMUNITY BLOCK PARTY
Wednesday, June 30
12pm - 5pm
160th St. between Melrose and Courtlandt Avenues

The Bronx Defenders’ Community Block Party is a fun, safe venue for children and community members to enjoy free food, music and entertainment, play games, participate in arts and crafts, register to vote, compete in basketball, and connect with local community groups and important social service organizations.  They will provide information about their services for community members about criminal justice matters, family court involvement, or civil-legal issues. Partnering local community service groups will provide medical advice and information, immigration help, affordable housing information and more.

For more information, please click here.

More notable than the details of the candidates’ platforms is the political reality that it reflects.  Namely, that candidates for office are rushing to promote their Rockefeller drug law reform credentials, rather than their “tough on crime” policies, as pragmatic way to connect with voters.

Litmus Test in Primary: Overhauled Drug Laws
By Nicholas Confessore
Published June 20, 2010

For many Democrats in Albany, it was a landmark achievement: the long-sought overhaul of New York’s strict Rockefeller-era drug laws, repealing mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders that critics said disproportionately and unfairly fell on blacks and Latinos.

But that legislative victory last year has emerged as a litmus test in the increasingly bitter five-way Democratic primary battle for attorney general.

One candidate, Kathleen M. Rice, the Nassau County district attorney, who many believe is the favored candidate of Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, the Democratic candidate for governor, says she has always supported the drug law overhaul. Two other candidates, Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky of Westchester County and State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, who represents parts of Manhattan and the Bronx, have assailed her in recent weeks, saying that Ms. Rice had opposed the overhaul last year and had changed her views only recently, after she decided to run for higher office.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Schneiderman, who sponsored the Senate version of the legislation, even challenged Ms. Rice to debate the issue with him, one on one. Ms. Rice has not yet agreed.

“Given that we have an honest difference of opinion,” Mr. Schneiderman said in an interview, “on our state’s most defining criminal justice issue, I believe the public would be well served by an honest and respectful debate on our divergent positions and records.”

The five candidates will meet on Monday for a moderated forum in Manhattan.

The attacks against Ms. Rice may be calculated to fuel perceptions that she is too conservative to be the Democratic nominee; she did not register as a Democrat until 2005, shortly before her first run for district attorney, while other candidates have been at pains to describe themselves as lifelong Democrats.

But underscoring the debate over changing the drug laws is a battle by the Democratic candidates - all five of whom are white - for the allegiance of black voters in what is expected to be a low-turnout primary.

“The reforms resonate powerfully in the African-American community,” said David S. Birdsell, dean of the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College. “It is also a signature piece of progressive legislation for an increasingly large part of the Democratic primary base. It’s a litmus test for progressive voters and an appeal to a group that was disproportionately harmed by the old laws.”

In candidate forums and interviews, on her campaign Web site and through a campaign spokesman, Ms. Rice has described herself as a strong supporter of changing the Rockefeller-era laws, which bound judges to sentence even nonviolent, first-time drug offenders to prison.

“Had I been in the Legislature, I would have absolutely voted for the reforms,” Ms. Rice said in an interview. “There was no distinction under the Rockefeller laws for those who were for-profit drug dealers and those who were just addicted.”

Yet there is little evidence that Ms. Rice voiced support for the revision at the time it was being debated in Albany last year. Instead, like nearly every other district attorney in the state, she expressed concerns about one of its most significant provisions: giving judges the authority to send many of those charged with drug crimes to treatment programs instead of prison.

That change deprived district attorneys of the enormous - and, critics argued, unfair - leverage they exerted in drug cases. Under the old law, district attorneys decided who would have access to treatment programs. Defendants who contested the charges against them at trial risked significant jail time with no hope that a judge could order treatment as an alternative.

Mr. Brodsky said, “She was O.K. on diversion, but she’s been bad on judicial discretion from the get-go.”

“The problem here,” he added, “is that she’s not willing to speak candidly about it.”

In a March 2009 letter to a Republican state senator from Long Island, Ms. Rice said she believed that the state’s drug laws needed changing but found “deeply concerning” the legislation’s provisions to restore judicial discretion to sentencing.

“There is nobody more familiar with a defendant’s background and the details of their current case than the district attorney’s office,” Ms. Rice wrote. “Exclusion of the most informed party from such an important process is ill-conceived and will result in fewer drug treatment success stories and more nonaddicted criminals on our streets.”

The senator, Charles J. Fuschillo Jr., read the letter during a Senate debate over the bill, and cited it as a reason he voted against the legislation.

Ms. Rice’s critics also point to a statement issued in April 2009, after the law was passed, by the state association of district attorneys. Ms. Rice was on the association’s board.

The statement, made on behalf of the group by its president, Daniel M. Donovan Jr., the Staten Island district attorney, criticized the overhaul as “a serious threat to public safety in our state.”

A spokesman for Mr. Donovan, now a Republican candidate for attorney general, said that his office had circulated the letter to individual district attorneys before it was released, the association’s usual practice, and that Ms. Rice’s office had voiced no objection to the language.

And as recently as November, in an interview with The Westbury Times, a local newspaper in Nassau County, Ms. Rice said she would “reserve judgment” on the new law to see how it worked in practice and said she remained concerned that the law gave too much discretion to judges.

In an interview, Ms. Rice said that she had been worried about district attorneys’ losing their voice in sentencing decisions. She also said she had supported giving judges sentencing discretion, despite the concerns she had raised at the time.

“I understand that that’s a cornerstone of the reform,” Ms. Rice said. “But I think it would be inappropriate for me not to at least express my concern that I have. I agree that judges should have discretion. I also feel that D.A.’s should have a voice, because they represent the communities.”

But some advocates for the overhaul said they believed Ms. Rice was being disingenuous.

“To me, her statement is ridiculous,” said Gabriel Sayegh, state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, a national group that urges relaxation of certain drug sentencing laws. “To say that the prosecutors were being cut out of the process is a specious claim, and it has everything to do with who will be the ultimate decision maker in the courtroom - the judge or the prosecutor.”

Ms. Rice also cited a program she instituted early in her tenure to divert nonviolent drug offenders into treatment programs. That program, like similar ones in Brooklyn and elsewhere, won praise from some advocates for drug law reform, including Robert Gangi, the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York.

But in an interview, Mr. Gangi said Ms. Rice’s position on judicial discretion was inconsistent.

“If you support the discretion, then you support reform without the conditions or caveats that she seems to be applying,” he said. “The central principle was to return discretion to judges in drug cases. If you’re hedging your bets on that, you’re trying to talk the talk but not walk the walk.”

It is an honor to join the Public Policy Project as the Associate Director and Coordinator of Drop the Rock. My experience with the coalition has been rewarding and I am prepared to take on the challenges of this new position. My passion for policy reform is rooted in the Bronx, where I watched family members and friends become disenfranchised by the criminal justice system. I knew immediately that I wanted to use my degree to advocate for change in the communities directly affected by these issues.

Under Caitlin Dunklee’s leadership, I have had the opportunity to engage in policy reform that I believe in and that will break barriers for the individuals in prison and those transitioning home. Not only have I gained an enormous amount of knowledge assisting Caitlin, she has been an effective organizer and wonderful mentor. I also enjoyed working with the talented group of DTR interns on various projects and will continue to work with them going forward. I would like to thank Bob Gangi for being supportive of my transition into the field and providing me with this opportunity. Together we will work with the coalition to expand our policy agenda.

I am excited about what’s to come! As we move into the summer months, we will begin to organize for Drop the Rock’s first District Day, where teams of coalition members will visit their elected officials to establish a relationship and educate them on our campaign. We will also hold a “Train the Trainers” workshop and begin to develop a strategic plan for next year’s legislative session. I look forward to this new venture and can’t wait to work with you all to promote justice reform in NY.

In addition, the Juvenile Justice Project is seeking an Associate Director with a focus on LGBTQ issues to assist the Project Director with other juvenile justice reform work. For more information, please click here.

See you at our next Drop the Rock coalition meeting on Tuesday, July 13 at 6pm.

Drop the Rock!

Denise Thomas
Associate Director
Correctional Association

155 Workers, 6 Young Men, 1 Fiscal Mess
By Jim Dwyer
Published June 8, 2010

Every day brings dreadful news of some worthy cause that is going to be cut because government budgets are being hit with cannonballs.

Today, for a change, we present some causes worthy of being cut.

Take, for instance, a place called the Tryon Residential Center, run by the state agency in charge of juvenile justice. It is a place for children who get into trouble.

State records show that 155 public employees are assigned to the boys section at Tryon. They oversee a total of six young men, lodged in a place that few people believe should exist anymore, and that is scheduled to be shut down by the end of the year.

Yet Tryon will remain completely staffed because the state is tied in a knot: two governors ago, the state promised public employee unions that it would give one year’s notice before shutting down juvenile detention centers or adult prisons.

So as of Tuesday, with six young people living there, here are some of the jobs still budgeted at Tryon: 11 cooks, 1 food manager, 6 keyboard specialists, 5 nurses, 1 motor mechanic, 7 teachers, 1 teaching assistant, 4 vocational instructors, 3 recreation specialists, 81 youth division aides and 2 calculations clerks.

Also, one “principal accounting clerk.”

“You would think common sense would say you don’t need this facility, so close it,” said Gladys Carrion, commissioner of the state’s Office of Children and Family Services. “I’m faced with the reality of having four or six kids in a facility and a full complement of staff. I have similar situations in other facilities. These beds cost $240,000 a year.”

New York could change the state seal to an empty bed. One of the great successes of modern times has been the decline in crime, but in upstate New York, the prison economy depends on a steady supply of criminals.

Although thousands of adult cells are empty, it is hard to know if the state will be able to shut even the single medium-security prison that the Department of Correctional Services has said it no longer needs.

That prison, at Ogdensburg, has 287 employees on its roster, and 419 inmates, all of whom could be dispatched to empty cells elsewhere. But the number that weighs heaviest is not how many people are in the prison: it is how many people work there. And this prison is in a district represented by a Democratic senator, who naturally sees despair, locusts and Republicans overrunning the land should it be closed. There are 32 Democrats in the Senate, and 32 votes are needed to pass any legislation there. Every last one of them can be king or queen.

Both the State Senate and the Assembly have stated they want Ogdensburg to stay open, even though the governor says it should be closed in January.

“With all the state’s fiscal problems,” said Robert Gangi, the executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, “this extraordinary waste should not be tolerated because of the usual reasons - that these are important jobs in these communities, and because of the political pushback.”

THAT pushback has taken grotesque forms. The juvenile detention system is run not by the corrections department, but by Commissioner Carrion’s agency. She has been closing places like Tryon, which was cited last year for its brutality by the United States Justice Department.

In response, the unions representing workers in the detention centers, and various Republican legislators, have called for the commissioner to be fired. One senator accused her of permitting a near-orgy at a detention center in Goshen. Yet the evidence suggests that she has solid grounds for saying that such places are beyond reform.

In the Goshen case, four young men were permitted to invite four women to a social event at the center, a reward for having met goals. These eight young people were supervised by seven adults. Nevertheless, video footage shows that they were permitted to engage in intimate contact, according to a senior state official.

Gov. David A. Paterson has proposed legislation that would revamp how the state treats young people who get into trouble. For decades, they have been shipped far from home, into detention centers that often became a passageway to adult criminal life. A task force appointed by the governor said that under the existing system, the state was “harming its children, wasting money and endangering its public.”

“This,” the task force said, perhaps optimistically, “cannot continue.”

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com