Flanked by police officials, Donald Trump announces his support for a proposal by a bipartisan group of lawmakers to substantially rewrite sentencing and prison laws in November 2018. [Source: nytimes.com]Donald Trump has a lot of faults. God knows that we have discussed them at length here at CovertAction Magazine and in other venues.
But if there is one thing that Trump is right on, it is prison reform. It was Trump, after all, who issued a flurry of pardons and commutations at the end of his first term and who signed into law the First Step Act, which ended thousands of sentencing disparities, shortened drug-related sentences, and gave thousands of former prisoners a second chance at a productive life.
That’s great. And it is certainly more than Joe Biden did in his four years as president (keeping in mind that his vice president is a former prosecutor who dedicated much of her adult life to incarcerating people).
But with that said, at the federal, state and local levels, prison conditions, draconian sentences and corruption are very serious problems all around the country.
Donald Trump is going to have his hands full. (One proviso: No president has jurisdiction over state corrections departments or local jails. But every president sets the tone for state and local corrections departments. And when those corrections departments ignore human rights, civil rights and civil liberties, every president can use the Justice Department to sue states, to prosecute wardens and crooked guards, and to force positive changes.)
Here is what those of us who care about these issues are up against:
- Seven prisoners who tested positive for drugs at the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex earlier this year were given a choice of punishments, according to a recently filed federal lawsuit. Warden David Green and six guards offered them the choices of either being tased or being forced to drink their own urine. The Kentucky State Department of Corrections responded that, well, at least they fired the guards.
- Clark County, Indiana, had to pay $325,000 to 25 former county jail prisoners, both male and female, after Sheriff Jamey Noel—who has been linked to the Oath Keeper militia group—admitted that he allowed guards to carry out something that they called a “Night of Terror,” where, for $1,000 paid to the warden, they were allowed to take prisoners to isolated parts of the jail to rape them. Noel was fired, but for an unrelated embezzlement case. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison last month.
- Three former Santa Clara County, California, jail guards pleaded guilty in August for beating a mentally-ill prisoner to death. The three were convicted by a jury after claiming that the prisoner, Michael Tyree, had simply fallen. But they were ordered to spend only nine years in prison. With time served awaiting trial, all will be released later this year.
- The warden of Alabama’s Limestone Correctional Facility and his wife were arrested earlier this year on three felony charges of producing and trafficking psilocybin, also known as “magic mushrooms.” The warden, Chad Ray Crabtree, already had been in the news after three prisoners under his care died and their bodies were returned to their families with their internal organs missing.
- A guard at South Carolina’s Marlboro County Detention Center was sued earlier this year after being accused of brutalizing a homeless mentally-ill prisoner by stomping on his head. Prisoner Eldred Joe received no treatment in the jail for his bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and he was allegedly brutally beaten by guard Morgan Ridges after other guards had left the area.
- The Ohio Court of Claims approved in July a settlement whereby the state’s Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections had to pay the estates of former prisoners Dewey McVay, Jr., and Michael McDaniel $725,000 after guards at the Correctional Reception Center in Columbus beat them to death. McVay was allegedly killed because he was an accused rapist. McDaniel was beaten to death for no apparent reason just six months before he was due to be released. County and state prosecutors elected not to file charges against the guards.
- South Carolina prison captain Christine Livingston, was arrested earlier this year and charged with accepting $219,000 in bribes for smuggling cell phones into the prison in which she worked. She was also charged with maintaining an inappropriate sexual relationship with a murderer in the prison.
- Georgia Department of Corrections guard Daniel Farmer was sentenced to 15 years in prison earlier this year for allowing one prisoner to attack and murder another with a home-made shank. The victim was stabbed seven times and killed after Farmer unlocked the victim’s cell remotely so that the other prisoner could stab him.
- The deputy warden in Oklahoma’s Lexington Assessment and Reception Center prison, Tasha Parker, was arrested in May for smuggling drugs into the prison, as well as for conspiring with four other guards to assault a prisoner. She is awaiting trial. The four guards were charged with misdemeanors and have kept their jobs.
- Three guards and three staff members at New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex were arrested in May and charged with smuggling cell phones, ceramic blades, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, oxycodone, fentanyl, and synthetic opioids into the jail for sale to prisoners. The five each face 20 years in prison.
These bullet points are but a small sampling of what is happening in the country’s jails and prisons at the local, state and federal levels.
The Biden administration did nothing to address the problem. Frankly, no president has done anything of note to address our utterly broken penal system.
Now it is Donald Trump’s turn. Again. I won’t hold my breath. But even though business school teaches that “hope is not a strategy,” I will remain hopeful that something—anything—good will happen.
