Headed up by: ____________________

Public Education and Fund Raising

April 15, 1999, NYTimes - Soros Giving $15 Million
for Program on Medical Ethics and Money

By ANTHONY RAMIREZ

George Soros, the billionaire financier, plans to spend $15 million on a
new program to de-emphasize profit in medical care, develop altruistic
service programs for young doctors and encourage consumer groups to join
with physicians to monitor the quality of care better.

Soros said the money would pay for research and lectures from scholars
on the role of professionalism and ethics in modern medicine, and help
develop programs for young doctors to learn how to provide medical
services to patients outside of the medical mainstream, like new
immigrants or the homeless. The program will also solicit grant
applications from groups hoping to form physician-patient alliances to
help define priorities in care.

"The amount of money we're committing is tiny compared to the field,"
Soros said in an interview Tuesday. "But we hope to make a difference in
the way health care is provided in the United States."

He is announcing the program in a speech today at Columbia University's
College of Physicians and Surgeons. In his prepared text, Soros, who
made his fortune trading in currency markets, said: "Health care
companies are not in business to heal people or save lives; they provide
health care to make profits. In effect, in the necessary effort to
control health care costs through the market mechanism, power has
shifted from physicians and patients to insurance companies and other
purchasers of services."

David J. Rothman, who teaches the history of medicine at Columbia, will
lead the program, which is called "Medicine as a Profession."

For most of the 20th century, Rothman said, medicine was not very
lucrative: "It began to be in 1965 with Medicare. Medicine was given a
blank check: You order it and the Government will pay for it."

Rothman said he had assembled a variety of scholars and experts for the
program's advisory board. To address health care as an economic and
political system, he has recruited Eli Ginsberg, a health economist;
Marc A. Rodwin, author of the 1995 book "Medicine, Money, and Morals:
Physicians' Conflicts of Interest," and James R. Tallon Jr., a former
New York State assemblyman who is now head of a health-care
philanthropic fund, the United Hospital Fund.

To look at health care in minority communities, Rothman has recruited
Susana Morales, an expert on minority patient care with Cornell Internal
Medicine Associates, and Gerald E. Thomson, a senior associate dean of
Columbia's medical school.

And to address broad issues of medicine and society, Rothman has
recruited Norman Daniels, a bioethicist at Tufts; David Blumenthal, a
Harvard professor specializing in quality of care, and Jerome Kassirer,
the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

[The PATRICK Crusade hopes the issue of medical care in prisons will be addressed]

April 16, 1999, NYTimes - CYBER LAW JOURNAL
[pro bono work supported by Soros]

NEWSWEEK.COM APRIL 19, 1999 - MY TURN

It's Time to Open the Doors of Our Prisons

Freeing first-time offenders is the compassionate answer. It also makes good economic sense.

By Rufus King

Americans, once so kind-hearted, have become lusty punishers. Since President Nixon's "war" on crime, the public has become increasingly intolerant of wrongdoers, a group with no lobbyists or spin doctors to look out for them. In the late 1960s, America, like most of the rest of the world, forsook capital punishment. Since reviving it almost a decade later, we have executed more than 500 people. Now governors brag about the number of death warrants they sign.
The U.S. prison population, 1.2 million not counting short-term jail inmates, is the largest in the Western world. A number of states are spending more on prisons than on schools, and along with the federal government are turning some of their prisoners over to private custody—so that skimping on accommodations directly boosts stockholders' dividends. Lawmakers trample one another to pose as tough crimefighters, and mandatory minimums force judges to hand out long sentences, sometimes life, automatically upon conviction. Parole programs have atrophied.

The situation is aggravated by America's hysteria over drugs. Self-administered opiates (heroin and morphine) and cocaine together cause fewer than 8,500 deaths per year—compared with tobacco, 430,000, and alcohol, 100,000 dead, plus millions drunk in the gutter or otherwise incapacitated. I don't think marijuana has ever killed anyone.

Yet the White House campaign to be "drug free" not only costs billions, but concentrates on prohibition and punishment at the expense of notably cheaper and more effective treatment. The elaborate U.S. campaign to compel drug-crop growers abroad to give up their livelihoods is one of the most fatuous national efforts ever undertaken. Imagine Turks and Andeans trying to keep Yankee farmers from growing their truly deadly tobacco!

Nearly all the nation's prison systems are overcrowded, many critically. In state and federal prisons, more than half of all inmates are serving their time for nonviolent offenses. Some 30 percent are first offenders. African-Americans are a grossly disproportionate 49 percent. Drug-law convictions account for almost one fourth, and nearly one third of these are for simple possession. Genuine hardship cases abound, with stunning sentences for minor wrongs, the separation of parents and young children and a wide disproportion among convictions for identical offenses.

After working for many years in the development of criminal law, I've become increasingly concerned about our clogged prison system. My proposal to relieve the problem is simple: systematic use of pardon and commutation powers to clear out worthy first-offense long-termers to make room for serious felons. It should stir compassion and appeal to common sense. But there is another consideration that Americans may understand even better: costs. At an estimated $20,000 per year to hold each prisoner, we are spending more than $25 billion annually for simple, nonproductive warehousing of convicted offenders.

Altogether, our annual layout for corrections is more than $35 billion, curving steadily upward even as crime rates drop. We are developing a powerful "prison- industrial complex," a national growth industry exploiting today's hostility toward wrongdoers. There is scant evidence that long prison terms alone are causing the drop. Most observers credit other factors such as progress in reducing poverty, the improved economy, tighter gun laws and the increasing average age of the population. Criminologists agree that about-to-be lawbreakers don't look up penalties in the law books; they plan, if at all, on how to avoid being caught.

Every system for administering justice has, since ancient times, included some provision for tempering punishment, usually a power to pardon and commute sentences, vested in the executive. Royal pardons were well known to most of our European forebears. American presidents draw the power directly from the Constitution, and every state governor enjoys some such prerogative. Historically, the power has been freely, often liberally used, sometimes to grant amnesty to entire classes of offenders.

So I urge an immediate review of all sentences now being served in order to identify nonviolent first offenders held for disproportionately long terms, to release those who have paid their debts to society and are good risks, and to make room for menacing recidivists and other serious offenders.

There would inevitably be a few Willie Hortons, but the process might be designed to include further screening in each case. Release should be strictly conditioned on good behavior and other factors where appropriate.

The president could initiate such a program simply by directive, or Congress could set up a new authority for it. And any governor or state legislature could give it a try. I only need to convince enough economy-minded people that some of the nation's prison-budget billions could be better spent elsewhere. Perhaps I've convinced you.

King is a Washington lawyer with a lifelong interest in criminal justice.

Newsweek, April 19, 1999

KIDS LIKELY TO FOLLOW PARENTS TO PRISON
Experts Warn of Trouble With Growing Incarceration Rate

April 8, 1999

By Jim Krane

WASHINGTON (APBNews.com) -- Across the United
States, more than 1.5 million children go through life with at least one parent in prison.

An estimated 60 percent of the country's 1.8 million state and federal prisoners are parents. Since men make up 94 percent of the prison population, most are fathers.

And according to speakers at a U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance law enforcement conference here,
those figures are a harbinger of the prison population of the future.

Cycle threatens to snowball

Statistics show that children whose parents are locked away in prison are likely to be jailed themselves. And with corrections systems now sequestering Americans at an unprecedented pace, the parent-child inmate cycle threatens to snowball.

With more parents behind bars today, more children will follow tomorrow, speakers said.

In fact, a child with an incarcerated parent is five times more likely to be jailed than an a child who grows up with parents who manage to stay out of jail, said Ann Jacobs, director of the Women's Prison Association, a group which develops programs for incarcerated women.

One in 10 of those children will be jailed before adulthood, said Jacobs.

"Children with an incarcerated parent are much more susceptible to a bad activity such as gang involvement, early pregnancy and early crime activity," said Jacobs.

Locking up mothers hurts

And when a mother goes to jail, the effect on a child is particularly bad, said Jacobs.

Jacobs pointed to a recent federal law, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, as worsening the situation. Instead of seeking to reunify children with their parents -- who may have reformed after leaving jail -- the law makes it easier for authorities to strip away parental rights and place a child with relatives or in foster care.

The majority of women prisoners are nonviolent offenders, often locked up on drug charges, said Jacobs. Since many states now employ strict sentencing guidelines -- and since women are generally low-level offenders with little information that might entice a prosecutor to bargain for a lesser plea -- women offenders often draw long prison sentences, said Jacobs.

"I personally find this devastating," she said. "I can't tell you how many women I know who've lost their kids, and then turned out to be good moms."

Those children, she said, are more likely to be headed for trouble -- and jail -- without their mother's support.

Visitation encouraged

Jacobs and others who spoke at the workshop on incarcerated parents said children should be encouraged to visit parents in prison, to strengthen family bonds and give the jailed parents incentive to turn their lives around.

"Now, can we actively involve the family, instead of sending out ambulances to repair the damage that's being done to them?" asked Jim Mustin, founder of the Family Corrections Network, a group that seeks to strengthen ties between family members inside prison and out.

Currently, roughly half of incarcerated mothers receive visits from their children, Jacobs said.

Value systems taught in prison

Inside the prison, too, more should be done to teach inmates how to be better parents, said Garry Mendez, director of the National Trust for the Development of African-American Men.

Mendez said he was less interested in reforming the system than those inside it.

"How come, when we have this captive audience of males, we can't try to teach them how to be responsible fathers?" Mendez asked.

Mendez's group works inside prisons to change the value systems of prisoners, teaching them to take care of their own mental and physical health, and to respect their families.

"We demand that they take care of themselves. We tell them, 'Don't call anyone home collect and tell them what to do,'" said Mendez. "Instead, when you call, ask them if there's anything you can do."

im Krane is an APBNews.com staff writer (jimk@apbnews.com).

Davis names Mimi Silbert to her second stint on Board of Corrections

SACRAMENTO - The driving force behind San Francisco's nationally recognized Delancey Street Foundation was appointed Friday by Gov. Davisto her second stint on the state Board of Corrections, which helps set prison policy for the state. Mimi Silbert, 57, has served for more than 25 years as president, board chair and chief executive of Delancey Street, a self-help residential center for former convicts, addicts and prostitutes. They also run a popular South Park restaurant. Since 1996, Silbert has served as a special assistant to Mayor Willie Brown on juvenile justice policy. At the time of her appointment, Brown asked Delancey Street to come up with a master plan for The City's juvenile justice system. Some of Silbert's recent reforms include a 24-hour "community assessment center" in the Tenderloin District's YMCA, staffed by workers from the Juvenile Probation Department, Police Department, Department of Public Health and community-based organizations. In an interview, Silbert said she's looking forward to working again on the Board of Corrections because the Legislature recently gave its members more power over juvenile justice policy. Silbert said she wants to work on coordinating all 58 counties in California to form a single vision for juvenile justice, and she wants to update facilities and work on better links between juvenile jails and community programs, like group homes.

"There is such a span of possibilities," Silbert said. "It's really getting each county to be able to go in both directions at the same time, to provide a circle of real alternative services so we can do something to change criminals into non criminals, which is the whole point." Delancey Street is acclaimed for reforming hardened adult criminals by administering a dose of confrontational group therapy, occupational training, "life-skills training" and tough love - all within a residential setting. Silbert served on the Board of Corrections from 1986 to 1992, after being appointed twice by Republican former Gov. George Deukmejian. From 1990 to 1994, Silbert served as project director for the Department of Corrections' Bay Area Parole Services Network. In an interview with The Examiner at the time of her first Corrections appointment, Silbert said imprisoning criminals "at someone else's expense, providing all their food and lodging and letting them sit there with no responsibility, is absurd." She was equally opposed to the folks who are soft on crime. "If you care about people," she said, "you hold them accountable." Silbert has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in criminology and psychology at UC-Berkeley, CSU-San Francisco and Golden Gate University. She also was a member of the Peace Officers Standards and Training advisory commission. The Board of Corrections position is unpaid, but Silbert must be confirmed by the state Senate. Approval is almost certain: Senate president pro tem John Burton, D-S.F., is one of Silbert's biggest supporters.

Inmate populations for US jails and prisons 1980-1997

US rate of Incarceration compared to other western nations

Data from Data-International use of Incarceration (1997 report) http://www.sproject.com/press-12.htm

End of Proposal

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