Category: Rights of Prisoners

Prof. Mushlin Testifies in Favor of Oversight in NY State Prisons

POST WRITTEN BY:  Erica Danielsen (’16), J.D. Pace Law School

On Wednesday, December 2, 2015 the NY Assembly Standing Committee on Correction held a hearing in Albany to discuss “Oversight and Investigations of the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS).” The Assembly held this hearing in the aftermath of the June 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility escape. The Assembly invited experts, academics, attorneys, and family members of inmates to testify. The Committee also invited Pace Law School Professor Michael B. Mushlin to testify.

Prof. Mushlin has extensive experience in the area of prisoners’ rights and brought his knowledge of prison oversight to the attention of the Committee. He expressed the importance of adequate oversight and noted key issues with New York’s current failure to provide adequate oversight of its correctional facilities. He stated that

oversight is needed because prisons are dark places where horrible things will happen unless there is oversight. Without oversight prisons cannot be humane despite the best of intentions and ‘inhumane prisons are not safe.’

Prof. Mushlin presented the Committee recommendations on how to improve its lacking system. He suggested critical components of oversight such as independence, an open door policy for physical access, an effective monitoring and regulatory system, the duty to report, and a legal requirement for correctional facilities to respond to investigation reports.

Professor Mushlin embraced organizations that New York already has in place such as the Correctional Association and Prisoners Legal Services of New York whose Executive Director, Karen Murtagh, also testified, and he pointed out that these organizations can only do so much, which is why legislative action is needed.  Professor Mushlin critiqued the NYS Commission of Correction which currently has legislative authority to investigate and report on prisons but fails to live up to its legislative powers.

The Assembly further heard testimony from Charlene Burkett, Corrections Ombudsman of State of Indiana, and Kate Eves, Independent Oversight Consultant of United Kingdom and Wales. Ms. Burkett and Ms. Eves aided the discussion by offering insights about an overview, guidelines, and recommendations of how various oversight bodies work in other states and countries. Moreover, Jonathan Moore, Esq. – the lead counsel for New York’s stop and frisk case, attorney for the Eric Garner case, and counsel for the family of Samuel Harrell who tragically lost his life to guards at Fishkill – testified about the importance of civil rights issues. And last but certainly not least, came the emotional cries from two mothers whose son’s were abused in prisons bringing their own human realities to the attention of the Committee.

Neither the Inspector General nor the Commissioner of Corrections testified on Wednesday since the Clinton escape investigations are still pending. However, Daniel O’Donnell, the chair of the Committee on Correction, adjourned the hearing for a future date in order for those organizations to offer testimony about their findings. Mr. O’Donnell stated that he would subpoena them to testify if necessary.

Related Readings:

Is America Becoming a Nation of Ex-Cons?

POST WRITTEN BY: John Humbach, Professor of Law at Pace Law School.

graphMuch has been written about the extraordinary rates of incarceration as a pressing criminal justice problem. Mass incarceration is, however, only part of the challenge posed by the American criminal justice system. Already, an estimated 25% of U.S. adults have a criminal record and, with a million new felony convictions per year—one every 30 seconds—America’s ex-offender population is growing exponentially (see chart to the right). Our country is well on its way to becoming a nation of ex-cons.

The effects of being a “criminal” do not, moreover, end with release from prison. Newly released inmates are immediately met by a growing assortment of law-prescribed “collateral consequences” that now number in the tens of thousands. In their cumulative impact, these legal disabilities greatly reduce the ability of ex-offenders to find housing, make a living, get an education, obtain bank loans, support their children or, generally, to enjoy the usual rights and amenities of citizenship that are essential for a reasonable quality of life.  As a result, our nation’s criminal-justice policy is literally re-making America into a legally divided multi-stratum society with an entrenched system of law-sanctioned discrimination against a large and growing underclass with a legally-prescribed inferior civic status.

Already, the ex-offender class is the nation’s largest legally discriminated-against minority group, and it is growing. The adverse social implications of this trend remain unclear and the critical demographic tipping point is still uncertain. But whatever the details, this is surely not good path for the nation to be on.

Graph Source: 

Related Readings: 

  • John Humbach, Is America Becoming a Nation of Ex-Cons?, 12 Ohio St. J. Crim. L. 605 (2015) (SSRN) (Pace Digital Commons).  

John Oliver on the Public Defender System

public defenders JOJohn Oliver did it again! With more than 2.8 million views, John Oliver in his weekly “Last Week Tonight” analyzes the public defender system in the United States as only he can do it.  He begins by quoting the 1963 decision of Gideon v. Wainwright, in which the Court stated that “… any person … who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him.” Does this system works as intended?

He shares quite a few shocking facts and statistics:

  • “… anywhere from 60-90 percent of criminal defendants need publicly-funded attorneys, depending on the jurisdiction.” (Brennan Center for Justice, Apr. 9, 2013). 
  • “… 40% of all county-based public defender offices had no investigators on staff.” (Bureau of Justice Statistics).
  • “… about 95 percent of criminal cases never make it to trial.”

He explains that

[t]he Miranda warning includes the right to a public defender. It doesn’t include the fact that public defenders are highly overworked and grossly underpaid.

Related Readings:

  • Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). 
  • William Lawrence, The Public Defender Crisis in America: Gideon, the War on Drugs and the Fight for Equality, 5 U. Miami Race & Soc. Just. L. Rev. 167 (2015).
  • Indigent Defense Systems (Bureau of Justice Statistics) offers statistical data on the right to counsel and methods for providing indigent criminal defense.
  • John Oliver, Public Defenders, Last Week Tonight (Sept. 13, 2015).

Kafka’s Penal Colony and Solitary Confinement Debate in the US

We are very excited to feature Prof. Michael B. Mushlin’s latest law review article in which he compares Kafka’s fictitious world of punishment to the current state of solitary confinement in the United States. Prof. Mushlin has extensive experience in the field of prisoner’s rights work and specific issues such as solitary confinement.

POST WRITTEN BY:  Erica Danielsen (’16), J.D. Pace Law School

Franz Kafka lived in the Austria-Hungarian empire, in what is now Czech Republic, and wrote fiction stories in German during the 20th century. In 1914 Kafka wrote In the Penal Colony, a story describing a torture and execution device used in a mythical prison’s operation system. The machine would carve the sentence of a condemned prisoner on his skin before killing him over the course of twelve hours. The use of this machine only came to an end when a “Traveler,” an outsider invited to the penal colony, condemned its use by expressing, “I am opposed to this procedure.” Without the Traveler having been allowed to enter and observe what occurred in the penal colony no change to the system would have taken place.

For the 100th Anniversary of Kafka’s work, Prof. Muslin wrote, “I Am Opposed To This Procedure:” How Kafka’s In the Penal Colony Illuminates the Current Debate About Solitary Confinement and Oversight of American Prisons. The article, which is published in the Oregon Law Review, compares the use of the penal colony’s machine to the current use of solitary confinement in American prisons. Both the penal colony’s machine and solitary confinement inflict great psychological and physical pain on the people subjected to it. Additionally, both are seen as essential to the operation of the prison system yet neither would see change without an outside perspective into its use.

This article first recounts Kafka’s story In the Penal Colony and describes how Kafka’s professional life as an attorney might have influenced his story. It then provides a description of the American prison system focusing on two important aspects: the massive use of solitary confinement and the lack of meaningful oversight. The article is then brought together with a discussion of how Kafka’s profound insights, so powerfully set out in In the Penal Colony, can help society today understand why prison doors must be opened to outside scrutiny and why the rampant use of solitary confinement in the United States must end just as the penal colony’s machine was put to an end.

Related Readings: