Focus 580; Gates of Injustice: the Crisis in Americas Prisions

In this part of focus 580 will be talking about America's prisons that our guest for the program is a journalist who has been reading who has written about the conditions in jails and prisons for quite a long time his name is Alan Elsner and he works for the Reuters News Agency. Currently he is their national correspondent. He's the author of a book that's titled gates of injustice the crisis in America's prisons and its print published by Prentice Hall. It's out now and in bookstores if you'd like to take a look at it as we talk this morning with our guests comments and questions are certainly welcome. The only thing that we ask of people calling in is that they are brief. We just ask that so that we can keep the program moving and get as many people as possible but of course anyone listening is welcome to call. Just let me tell you a little bit more about our guest. He has been a journalist now for 25 years and has held a number of jobs with the news agency with Reuters. He was there. He is now their national correspondent and has covered the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Also terrorism issues. Before

that he was the chief political correspondent and headed Reuters teams that covered the 96 and 2000 presidential elections. He also served for that is the State Department correspondent and also has been a correspondent in both London and Jerusalem. And he is joining us by telephone. Mr. Elster Hello. All right thanks very much for talking with us. Be my it's be my pleasure. I hate to I almost hesitate to start out by making a reference to Abu Ghraib but I will just because because you have made a connection and I know other people who are interested in prisons in this country in corrections issues have made the connection too and basically here's what they have said. They have said that we we see the fact that there is so much so many people are so upset by the images that we have seen and by the treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war. At the same time people will argue that things are not unlike this have gone on in American prisons and have gotten some coverage and yet

Americans don't seem to be quite so concerned. And certainly the American government doesn't seem to be quite caught so concerned about what happens to the inmates of America's prison certainly not as there's not as much concern here. Been voiced about that as has been voiced about Abu Ghraib. Well you're absolutely right. I wouldn't make a complete parallel although there are similarities but you know I'm not aware of bodies being naked bodies being piled up in you know in a kind of human pyramid in the U.S. prisons but I am aware of cases in which people have been made to strip naked have been sexually abused have been intimidated with dogs and you know even more serious than that is the daily abuse that goes on in prisons. The rape which is in Demick in our prison systems the abuse of women which is a major problem. The abuse of the mentally ill. Another major problem 300000 mentally ill people in our prison system and also the neglect that goes on the neglect of people's health conditions the spread of infectious diseases within prisons and then

from prison to the community. So I do think that there are parallels and I do ask myself where is the outrage how many people now are in prison in the United States. It's about two point two million people and that figure is astounding though it is. It's a four a four fold increase over the last 25 years and of course we have more prisoners in this country than in any other nation in the world we have 5 percent of the world's population but we have 25 percent of the world's prisoners and there are about 10 million people who are booked into our jail system every year and cycle through the jail system. There are about 600000 more or less on any given day with many many more who pass through it. And one of the statistics that you cite that I think perhaps will surprise some people is is that particularly in recent years apparently there has been a very severe significant increase in the number of women in prison. That's right women are now the fastest growing sector of the prison population still

relatively small compared to the male population but but growing fast. And what you have to say about this is that the vast majority of them are there for nonviolent crimes. Very often it's drugs possession. And so they are victims of the so-called war on drugs in which we have incarcerated hundreds of thousands of people for possessing drugs for basic. Victimless crimes people who are harming themselves by using substances but not harming other people in the same way as for instance somebody who who who assault somebody or robs them or kills them or rapes them and is strikingly the average sentence or handing down by the by the courts for drug possession is more than double what you would get for assault. So you know my book is trying to point out that this just makes sense makes no sense whatsoever. Well no doubt part of the reason for the increase not just in the women in prison but the number the total number of people in prison part of that does I'm sure have to do with this thing that we call the

war on drugs. How much of that also has to do with the fact that in many places the discreet sentencing discretion has been taken away from judges. Well I think that's a major part of it. The mandatory sentencing that has come in has meant that people are sent away for inordinate length of time often and it's usually to do with drugs. So they took connected. We started the war on drugs probably in the early 70s. And so we've been doing it now for almost 25 years. And according to all the surveys I've seen just as many people use drugs now as then we're spending 20 billion dollars a year on the war on drugs. We're spending 57 billion dollars on our prison system so if you add those two together that's a pretty hefty chunk of money. Something else. And you did touch on it that also is I think a very striking number is the number of people in prison who are seriously mentally ill. And with the book comes this this line with the material it comes in the book that in fact that

the three largest mental institutions in the world are the L.A. County jail Rikers Island in New York in Cook County Jail in Chicago. You know that is an astounding figure I don't think many Americans know that. I was astounded when I was told and I did check it out. But I have about 4000 people in it on any given night in the L.A. County jail system who was seriously mentally ill and the system is spending about 10 million dollars a year on drugs for them. Now what's happened here is that we have closed down most of the state mental hospitals and institutions that used to provide beds for these people they were thrown out onto the streets. Many of them addicted to substances and of. They cycled through the German prison system. They are you know very often they go in there in a kind of revolving door they'll go in for 20 days and then they'll go back to the streets and then they'll go in again and I'll go back to the streets again and maybe visit to the hospital emergency room somewhere along the

line. And what I'm trying to argue in case is injustice is not only is this a cruel and neglectful way for society to deal with these people but it's also an incredibly costly way to deal with them. It couldn't you couldn't really devise a less efficient and more expensive way to deal with this very unfortunate segment of our society. And I suppose you would say the same for people who have substance abuse problems and the blood of the other kinds of problems that end up either lending people in jail or are unimportant of coexisting. Well yes I would because I think that if you look at other countries they deal with substance abuse in a completely different way. There are many things that you can do. You can have treatment you can have education if you want to punish people you can punish them by Senator Simpson to do community service or probation or warning or house arrest but just not prison because you know there are many harmful substances that people use in our society cigarettes is a harmful

substance alcohol when used to excess is a harmful substance and these people who harm themselves. But we don't imprison them for it. And so to send somebody away for 10 or 15 years for possession of a few grams of marijuana to me makes no sense whatsoever. What it does is it destroys communities because the onus is for them particularly on our inner cities and on our minorities. It takes parents away from their children especially the case with women. Eighty percent of the women in our prison system a mothers. And so the children end up with fractured families in fractured sort of communities. They tend to go to the streets. They join gangs and they have the next generation of our prison and jail inhabitants growing up. How many prisons or what percentage of Prisons can you say are providing something in the way of treatment for people who come to prison with drug or alcohol problems. Well according to a study that I quote from the federal government only about 10

percent of the people who need it and drug treatment get it in the prison system. What is true however is that if you want to continue your addiction in the prison system that is very much available to you because any drug that you name is available in the prison system they are smuggled in by visitors or in packages or and this is probably the most damaging way that they get in by the small minority of corrections officers who decide to augment their salaries by selling drugs to the inmates. And that's a serious problem the federal government looked at this in the Federal Bureau of Prisons a few years ago and they found that actually every single a facility that they looked at had drugs in it. And in fact the higher the security classification of assisted the facility the more drugs that they were. We have a couple of callers here we'll get them into the conversation and for everyone else and particularly if you've just tuned in I want to reintroduce our guest Alan Elsner is national correspondent for Reuters News Agency. And as a reporter who's covered a lot of different stories

both national and international He's also written a lot about conditions in jails and prisons and has a book on that subject it's titled gates of injustice the crisis in America's prisons. Questions here on the program are welcome in Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2. 2 9 4 5 5 and I believe that will start with the color in champagne on line 1. Well the president last night said that he's going to wipe off the face of the earth. And I'm just wondering how we're going to mark how we're going to wipe up the marks on men's and women's souls. But I'm not speaking about that I mean more. Wipe off what's engraved on their psyche. Those that participated in these tortures and I'm wondering how many tortures and abusers will make their way back into the prison system in the U.S. either its guards or inmates. Given that the Veterans

Administration is not really supporting veterans anymore and cutting a lot of mental health services. You think some of the participants of the US soldiers and contractors might end up with President fanatics too ethnic. And I have become to that extent abuses of other people you know what children criminals such as. Well I think there's a little off the subject of a woman book is about but there is one point which I think is very important and that is that the the trauma that people saw from inside the prison system does come back to haunt the rest of society. Congressman Frank Wolf a Republican from Virginia made this point he's a sponsor of something called the Rape Prevention Act which was signed by President Bush last year which seeks to find ways to combat prison rape. And he said the best way of creating a sociopath is to is is to subject him to this kind of abuse. And it's something that never leaves you. So it's very true to say that you know in this country over the last 25

years we really had an attitude of lock them up and throw away the key. And whatever happens to them in some sense they got it coming to them and I think that that's wrong because 95 percent of the inmates of our prison system are going to get out one day and they're going to come back to their communities and whatever they suffered while they were inside that's going to come back into the communities with them. What is the current reset of ism right. It's about two thirds within three years about two thirds of back. And you know obviously that's a sign of a failing system. Let's go to. Belgium your by line number four. Well good morning. It's obvious that there's a problem with the drug laws. If a high percentage of the people in prison are in jail for that one particular cause. But there's also an aspect of it that seems to be missing in the discussion and that is the profitability in it. Not only did the drug dealers make money off the drugs but then the law

enforcement makes money out of ignorance. In other words you need more officers you need more guns you need more cars need more jails you need more chambers. It becomes an industry in itself. I come of this in Gates of injustice there's a chapter on the financial aspects of the prison system and you're quite right we have about two million people working in corrections. Which is actually more than the combined work force of the three largest corporate employers in the United States. That's GM Ford and Wal-Mart and there are many communities that have become completely dependent on prisons for their employment I quote the case of Fremont counting Colorado where there are 13 prisons in one small county nine state and four federal and the number one employer is the State Department of Corrections and number two is the Federal Bureau of Prisons and there are these prison towns hundreds of them actually that have sprung up over across the length and breadth of this country. It's an

astounding statistic that I'm going to give you here but between 1985 and 1995 this country was opening a new prison at an average rate of one a week. That premise frightening our free aspect charges have tabs for this. It goes on and on just like you say sir. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let's go to another caller the next will be someone in Indiana and this would be line number two. Hello. Oh yeah. I did a years basically the whole decade of the 70s for drug charges. But I don't know if you talk about this in the book but the other things you've talked about anecdotally I know about you know first hand one thing that I was surprised me I became a jailhouse lawyer. I was educated and a number of people. I mean just from the small group of people I ran across to do suits for them and stuff up through the federal system. I got two guys out of there in illegally and all it took was you know one

page of a piece of paper and say referred of you know such and such a law in the state to refer such and such a law on the federal thing and next thing you know these guys are offered immediate parole. I just don't know if you touched on that sort of thing in your book but when those sort of things come down you have start questioning you know the home base the prosecutor the cops and all that when they actually sent somebody away with an illegal sentence which had really disturbed me when I was inside. I did my best to get a few guys out. Thank you. I think it's impossible to quantify how many people were wrongly imprisoned but if you look at the death penalty and especially in Illinois you see the mistakes certainly do happen. Your caller makes an interesting point he described himself as a jailhouse lawyer. And I think that since he was in prison in the 70s the authorities really cracked down on so-called jail Home House lawyers they really don't like them. They've cut down on access to. They did like at the beginning. Yeah very very very cut down on access to

law books and on On and in some cases jailhouse lawyers actually face abuse in their cases of so-called jailhouse lawyers being stuck in a in a in a cell with a known rapist to kind of straighten them out. You know it's it's a very abusive kind of system where the officer it is very often resent any kind of initiative any kind of control on the part of the of the inmates and will victimize them for it. Yeah well I sort of you know if you can talk in those terms I sort of live in the golden age. Federal and State laws for the prison system possess when we have a Supreme Court that was doing things in terms of civil rights and stuff I know most of that has been taken back by the Rehnquist group lost a lot of connections you know because some some as in already reported anymore but there for a while in the early 80s some of the things were set back restrained in some order and stuff like that. So I knew that there were a lot of

people who were going to get any sort of you know legal help simply because the things they did to change the law and you say I found myself moved 13 times from one unit to another and I had a buddy we started out at the wall and he he he moved I know and he was usually at some places less than four hours but he carried his books with him he had 13 boxes of you know the federal regulations with him and he just was bought from one place another and I always thought it was amazing how well the paperwork went through so damn fast that you know in four hours he said to another another unit or he might take you know a year year and a half to get to another unit closer to your home or you know if I could talk for days about this sort of thing you know as part of my past now and. But it certainly gives me a very interesting perception to a wall. Yeah our country will thanks for thanks. Well if you want to kind of get back to me the COA can still hear me you know and read the book

and wants to send me some e-mail mine my web address my e-mail access is on the back cover of the book it's Alan Ellison a dot com. Allan A L A N L as Neal if any are dot com and if anyone wants to e-mail me they can do so I get a lot of interesting stories actually through the e-mail you got one the other day from a guy this is interesting because it kind of chimes in with this caller being a jailhouse lawyer this particular individual was well educated when he got to prison in your 30s made him take a GED. He said I don't need a GED I have a college degree. They said you got to take the GED. And it turns out that when he was taking it off of the cell block was in there taking it with him and copying down his nonsense and they use this as a way of displaying their success in getting people through the GED if a complete fraud. Let's go to now the caller this would be Urbana. Three I don't remember when the first Clinton administration the framing in the past you know three strikes you're out law which

you know so outrageous and it continues to be Makes you wonder what they were smoking. I wondered if you could address the three strikes you're out policy and has there been any kind of a backlash toward it and the two tional way. Thank you. Interesting the Supreme Court last year found that three strikes was constitutional But Justice Kennedy was one of the five votes that voted for that. It went 5 4 then made a speech the American Bar Association last summer in which he said we shouldn't confuse the fact that a law is constitutional with the fact that it's just a law he was basically saying the law is constitutional but it's unjust it's unjust to send people away for 25 to 50 years for stealing pairs of jeans or for stealing videos which of the two instances that came to the Supreme Court the backlash I think is happening because the costs of the system are just out of control. Ten percent of the prison population now is serving a life which is almost doubled in the last 10 years and it's largely as a result of three strikes and similar

things. And if we're going to keep people in prison for life there they're going to grow old and eventually going to die in prison. So we're going to have to set up a geriatric ward for them which some prison systems on doing. We're going to say. Hospice is full of them I visited a hospice in Angola Prison in Louisiana and they're going to get every kind of illness that the rest of us get in old age they're going to get cancer Alzheimer's. I met a guy in Angola was 94 years old and had an Alzheimer's and no longer remembered why he was there in the first place. And of course treating these people in a prison is about the most costly way that you could devise to do it because prisons are not hospitals are not set up for this. Another caller here next would be in Chicago 1 1 0 0 0 years. Their stories are heartbreaking but I wondered about the socio economic aspects of it. I know that the prison guard. Have been so powerful in California I believe

they have a political lobby in their major force and determine the politics and I know in a lot of these states where they have a lot of these small towns where they are encouraged the building of prisons. It's almost seems as if it's a it's a job creation program and suggest the creation program at the lowest level because the people who staffed the prisons usually don't need much more than a high school education or that it almost seems as if we've made these prisons a substitute for improving our our school systems for creating jobs and also for just creating a quality of life for our citizens. I couldn't agree with you more with what you said. First of all on the point of a California prison guards union the CCP California. Correct. Peace Officers Association most California politicians will tell you that is the most powerful pack in the state. They actually had a governor Gray Davis

pretty firmly in their pockets and when he was trying to cut the budget he cut everything except corrections the present governor is not indebted to them. So we'll see if he dares to take them on. But they're extremely powerful in smaller county elections for lower for for things like judgeships district attorneys those kind of posts. Now on the point of of Prisons going to depressed areas again you're completely correct. If you look at where the new prisons have been cited many of them have gone to places like Appalachian where the coal mining industry collapsed or in Northern California where the forestry industry collapsed and they are indeed alternative forms of employment for these communities which we come to implicitly dependent on them. But that goes to get to my last question is I think will be very difficult for change because at the grassroots level you see people who believe that

their future is dependent on these other people think Carse aeration. What I think there's a grave danger and indeed I think that the shrinking of the prison system will run into resistance from a whole bunch of entrenched lobbies. But what I'm concerned with now is not actually shrinking the system but stopping its growth because it's just continuing to grow and grow and grow we've had 10 years of falling crime rates. And yet the prison system continues to grow that's not logical if we have forming crime rates less crime less arrests less people should be going to prison. That hasn't happened in fact more and more. And so we're in a cycle of self sustained growth right now. We have two thirds recidivism as I mentioned before and we have gangs becoming even more serious problem by the year by the day in our inner cities and I think all these things are very much connected. If we don't stop the madness. You know when I wrote my book I cited the figure of the cost of the prison system. Forty nine

billion dollars. And just earlier this month about two and a half weeks ago the Justice Department updated that figure to 57 billion dollars that's a growth of 8 billion dollars in the fall and in the space of two years. Incredible growth from how can we afford this. You know we we were spending just to give you a basis of comparison forty two billion on the federal Department of Education for spending much more on prisons than we aren't occasion at the federal level. I think it's the largest. More question it seems like it's but it's going into a cycle because we are losing more and more jobs and more more areas are becoming depressed as the manufacturing jobs move out and these people are at the exact same educational level most of them do not have college and so it would seem that create another prison to make up for the corporation that's moved out of town. You know in my book I cited the case of Corrections Corporation of America actually built a prison in Georgia on spec is like you know building

some townhouses in the U.S. and people going to come and buy them so you build a prison build it and they will come you know nobody asked them to build this prison that the state did not send the bill to the federal government didn't last and they just built on the supposition that sooner or later it would get filled. It did stand empty for about a year and then sure enough the federal government came along with the contract because it needed more beds to house immigrants and asylum seekers. And the fallout from 9/11 so that strategy by correction corporation paid off very handsome and handsomely for them. Thank you. Thank you for the call will be passed. Point here again let me introduce our guest the guest for this hour focus 580 is Alan Elsner He is national correspondent for the Reuters News Service and has been since 2001. He covered the 9/11 attacks the war on terrorism. He's done a lot of other things including serving as the chief political correspondent heading the teams that covered the

96 and 2000 presidential elections before that he was the State Department correspondent and other stories covered the end of the Cold War. He's also been correspondent in London and to Jerusalem and has written a lot about this issue that we're talking about this morning that is conditions in jails in prisons. His book is gates of injustice the crisis in America's prisons. Prentice Hall is the publisher it is out now in bookstores if you want to look at it and questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. I want to take a moment here we've been talking about the problems of the prisons how big they are the increase in the population how much it's costing how bad conditions are. And so if we'd been talking about that for about a half an hour now let me ask you because you also do address it in the book if you can talk a little bit about how you think that the system as it is could be changed should be changed. Yeah I think that I have a whole bunch of concrete suggestions for the first one is

we've got to stop the war on drugs we've alluded to that we've got to stop incarcerating people who are harming themselves perhaps but not harming other people and prison is not the right place for them. The second one is this question of mandatory sentences and we've got to kind of dismantle that system somehow. It's going to be tough because politicians all like to say that they're tough on crime and all like to do everything they can to avoid being labeled as soft on crime. I think that the strategy is to say that this is bang. Corrupting US is not a question of hard on crime or soft on crime it's a question of fiscal sanity and what serves our society best. The furred mangers suggestion is we got to do something about the mentally ill. The prison is just not the place to treat them. Now some of them have committed serious crimes and probably need to be incarcerated. But there are others who are just cycling through the system in this revolving door coming back again and again and again. And when they're released is the time to try to grab them and help them. I highlighted

a pilot program in Rochester New York where they get people as they were released from from jail. These are mentally ill people and they find them some kind of assisted living situation where there's somebody on hand that can help them with their daily needs and keep them on their meds and they keep them in programs and the cost savings of this are just enormous. You know this country had a pact when it when we closed down the mental hospitals at the same time we were supposed to open a network of clinics in the in the community to serve these people. Those clinics never got open. We let down the mentally ill we betrayed them and we really have to go back retrace our footsteps and redress that wrong. Let's talk with some of the folks here Herb in the next line too. Hello. I was calling to see what you would have to say about the issue of rehabilitation. Haven't really discussed it much yet.

Specifically in terms of Iowa I tend to. You know I'm cringe when I hear about sort of faith based programs that my father has always been a bi religious guy and he came out here from England a Christmas to a bank and he became very interested in a number of prisons in this area. He went to visit one in Iowa which was which had some kind of program where I have this kind of a of essentially like a religious based sort of rehabilitation program for offenders and he was very impressed by the very low recidivism rates and stuff like that. You're probably referring to Chuck Colson in his private prison fellowship without a down. That sounds very familiar to me. And they have a they have a prison in Texas which they've taken over they have one in Iowa and I believe that they are about to get one in Florida. Right. This is strictly for Evangelical Born-Again Christians now. You know I take the position that their work is valuable and is good. It's very intensive as well as the religious

aspects of their work. They also try to build people skills. They also provide mentals for people when they are released from the system. So it's no wonder that they do. You know there's been one study which suggested that there is a definite decline in recidivism as a result. A lot of this kind of intensive program. My argument is we ought to be doing this for everybody right. Not everybody in the prison system is a born again Christian. And not everybody in the prison system is going to be a born again Christian so I am all in favor of letting them carry on their valuable work. But I say we should extend the program to other people as well. Other people who may not be Christian who may not be born again only may not have the appetite for this particular style of evangelical treatment if you will. Yeah I would agree with that. I mean I just got to set my father quite a bit and he he took a position that the Bible was somehow a central plank of this and it wouldn't work without it. But I'm not I would I would lean more to what your view is allow.

Well if you if you if you have people who are willing to give it a shot and if you help them acquire some kind of job skills and if you give them a mentor to lean on and some kind of social network to rely on when they get out of prison then they're definitely going to have a. Had a chance of not returning. I think that's just pure commonsense unfortunately what we've done in this country is that we've basically stripped away most of the rehabilitative services that were provided to a band minimum. First it was done to make prison more unpleasant for people to be tougher on these people. Then it was done because we can't afford to provide the programs anymore because the system became so large and the state budgets became so stretched especially after 2000 when the economy nosedived. So what can you cut in the prison system you can't cut on the security you can't cut in salaries you can't cut on health care although they are trying to do that with these are

sure some results. So they come out on programs and that's what's happening now. You know majority of prisons offer no programs that means we're just warehousing people until they finish their sentence and they get out. I don't know if I could walk just another question Is there a country that you that you that you know about is there some other place that you've studied some of the country that you study whether you feel like they're really doing a good job at present. I don't kind of think that you've seen walking. You know I'm not an expert on other countries I've never actually been in a prison in another country so. But but I will say this in Europe the incarceration rate is six to 10 times lower as a proportion of the population than it is in the United States and certainly the system is not as bloated as it is here and it doesn't scoop up as many people for seemingly trivial offenses as we do here. I thank you very much. No nothing missing. Just a quick tip to pick up on the point you made about the fact that in so many places any kind of programming that we might put under the heading of

rehabilitation has been a lot of that has been cut back in part for financial reasons. I wonder to what extent you think contributing to that. It is the fact that as an idea it seems that we've gotten away from from the very idea of rehabilitation we've given up on the idea that adult criminals can be changed and we still seem to be holding on that idea to that idea a little bit when it comes to juveniles but even there I think that we're backing away from the idea that that even a child can't can't be rehabilitated. And then I think what you say is true for much of the 80s and 90s there was this attitude that what we have to do is basically throw a man in and you know take or throw away the key let them rot whatever happens to them in there they've got it coming to them. But now we have a situation where a lot of the people who were sent away in the mid 80s for 15 years or in the 90s for 10 10 15 years they getting out. And so we have people we have a re-entry now of about 600 50000 people a year are leaving prisons and coming back to their communities. And of course that entirely

on rehabilitated. So now the new buzzword is re-entry everyone's talking re-entry from President Bush spoke about it in his State of the Union address where he spoke about helping people who are leaving the prison system. My contention of course is but by the time they leave the system it's too late. You have to do something with them while they're in there. You have to you have to somehow make a change. It's tough to get a job if you're a felon. I mean it can be tough to get a job even if you're not a felon in this economy we want now. But if you're a felon many employers are not going to employ you. You lose all kinds of rights. If you've been in prison you lose the right for instance a federal housing grants or or for federal Pell Grants to get a college education you lose the right to join a whole number of professions you lose the right the right in many states to vote and you lose that for life. And what I saying in Gates of injustice is that justice demands that when the punishment has been served the punishment is over. What

we do in the United States right now is we keep on punishing people for the rest of their lives and that is just that to me is un-American. I'm you know I as you hear from my accent grew up in Britain like your last caller became an American in early 1997 it was a proud moment in my life I really believe in the U.S. Constitution and U.S. values. Unfortunately we're not taken seriously in many parts of the world anymore. Look at the problems that President Bush has convincing public opinion in other countries and these are countries that really loved America when I was growing up and looked to America and now you know we're seen as the bad guys. It just pains me awfully to see that. And you know our domestic disgrace which I think our prison system is has become part of our. Foreign policy problem. The next caller is in Champagne county line number three. You know as long as there's only a moment left I guess I'll just go to this point. I guess last night on the BBC some segments of a

I think a Texas training video prison training video were shown where humiliation is the sort of regularized in routine eyes. The people are made to lay on crawl on the ground and strip while they're crawling and spread and all that sort of stuff. I saw it first on a website called Pot TV dot net where you can watch it with and with sort of a real libertarian a. anti-drug crime. Sort of crap but. The point is that the TV eyelets about Abu Grab because they're saying you know this is going on here it's said and even one of the prisoners or one of the guards was came out of the Philadelphia prison system but the idea that it can be routine ised and trained I mean one always sort of knew that these abuses were going on but they have the parent you know audaciousness to to show it and put it in a training video it's quite astonishing stuff so I suggest

people go to that or if they want to get it from the BBC I think it was shown in and last night's And if people are going on that they can find that video it's just well to me it's just amazing that you know that that could be routine I've studied that and taught. You know I am unfamiliar with that video and I describe the incident in my book it happened in Brazoria County I believe in 1997 a group of inmates from Missouri where there was overcrowding was sent down to Texas Brazoria County Texas. And just as you described they were made to strip. They were attacked by guard dogs who were made to crawl along the ground. Now that is. And it was videotaped. Now that isn't regularized that incident was very much an aberration. I think there was a civil lawsuit. The county had to pay a couple a million dollars in compensation to the inmate so they settled it for a couple million. So it's not used to train

correctional staff in and I'm happy to hear that actually. And you know I think that most correctional officers at decent people who just want to get through the day and go home an injured. Some minority who just as in Iraq. You know you don't want to to to say that all the US troops in Iraq far from it involved in abuse is a minority but of course the minority can do enormous damage as a game we've seen in Iraq that is not video that's used to train correctional officers. I'm glad to meet her. But I think also as we know that as you mentioned earlier rape is done systematically the where they put people in with known offenders so maybe it's not done you know. And in a systematized and bureaucrat I's way which is good but but it is habitual and done and I also own I would definitely agree with you on that and I think that it's well known that rape is used as a management tool in some prisons by some prison or Dorothy's. They allow

the most aggressive and most dangerous inmates to kind of let off their sexual energy and steam by victimizing and raping weaker vulnerable inmates and that keeps the facility peaceful. So to speak though some major problem when people are raped they have no one to turn to if they go to the authorities to complain they could be labeled as a snitch. And the consequence of that can be fatal. And oftentimes if if they do pluck up the courage to complain and they go to authorities the authorities Loughlin their faces. I cite the case of a guy called Robert Johnson in Texas who was turned into a sex slave rival gangs are actually in a bidding war for his services and they were trading them back and forth. Now when he went to the authorities repeatedly many times and they just told him to get himself a boyfriend who could defend him you know with that kind of attitude. We have a serious problem. Well I appreciate the comments of the call that's go on here the next two. I have a caller in

Urbana line one below. Could you tell me the extent of the Partnership for Drug Free America as they think we are. I'm sorry I don't know that. Oh I they just seem so wasteful and ineffective and ineffective I'm sure you've seen them but they just seem just a total waste of hard earned taxpayer dollars that you don't have the I don't know how much I don't want to spend I don't know how effective they are. OK I thought I would cry out alright I think it's all right. We will go on again to Bloomington Indiana wind for Hello. Hi you mentioned Chuck Colson's prison program. You mention you my did I did the Cindy you mentioned that there's a research study showing that the program to the prison fellowship program works and the and the. The figures on that study are that it reduces risk citizen that is says. Say people don't return to prison

after they're released only about a quarter reduces about by just about three quarters. The control group in that study was simply a control group. Average prisoners that were released in that control group 20 percent repeated came back to prison. But in the Prison Fellowship group only six percent repeated so I've seen a study I think it was one of the University of Pennsylvania. I think you have to run the study for a few more years. You know it may be that those figures are very low and that maybe that that was just recidivism often after a year I think you have to run it for two three years. But I do believe that Chuck Colson's methods can reduce recidivism and I think that reducing recidivism has a huge financial payoff. It's California and take that as an you know an fairly average state $34000 to keep an inmate in prison for a year. So if you can keep 100 of them out that's already three point four million if you keep a felon of them now 34 million keep doing the

math. You know the figures add up pretty darn quickly. Yes that's very true. But you made an objection that I should like to answer you objected that you said that these people in this prison fellowship program should not be required to be born again. No I didn't say that. Well what I said was that we should have programs for other people who are not born again. Oh OK. I have no objection to Mr. Colson Evangel evangelical evangelical program in the prison system I think it's a good thing I support it. All I'm saying is we should try and offer some of these same services to people who may not feel able to. To be born again Christians you know there are other people in our prison system who are not Christian. There are people who are Muslim there are people who are Jewish. There are people who are no religion whatsoever. And there are other Christians you know who belong to sects that don't follow the particular guidelines of Mr. Colson and these people are also deserving of the services that's my only

argument. I see. You know a Christian would say to you Jean this is the only way and one president went when President Bush during the during the president's presidential campaign he was asked Remember he was asked Who is your favorite philosopher and he said it was Christ because he changed my heart. Do you remember that. I sorry I certainly do remember that quote but you know what. I think that if you were to argue to me that Jesus is the only way to gain eternal life I would say let's wait and see. You know you may be right you may be long wrong time will tell. But if you're talking about life on Earth as we know in the United States we should be offering services to everybody not just to people who who belong to or join a particular sect or a particular ideology. OK well enough and thank you very much. And other questions again. Certainly welcome. We have about five minutes left in this part of

focus 580 Our guest is Alan Elsner he is a national correspondent for Reuters news agency and author of the book Gates of injustice about the crisis in America's prisons something that we just touched on a little bit. And I want to come back to is the issue of how many people are sick are physically sick in prison we talked about mental illness we talked about substance abuse. We do have also a significant problem with with infectious disease sexually transmitted diseases have already had trouble which is obviously difficult to encapsulate in a very short time but I but but there's no question that illness and disease spreads very easily through prison systems say they're unventilated places people are held in very quite close quarter. There was one study that showed that about five hundred sixty thousand people who are active who are carriers of tuberculosis were being released by from our prisons and jails every year. We believe that about 40 percent of the inmates of our prisons have hepatitis C AIDS.

They have done a fairly good job of treating and they've really cut down the death rate from from AIDS because I think you know it's very very expensive to allow a prisoner to to proceed to full blown AIDS it's much cheaper to keep them on a drug regimen. But there are all kinds of outbreaks Legionnaires disease sexually transmitted diseases. There was an article in The New York Times on Sunday that looked at the Los Angeles County Jail which is in crisis they've had five murders of inmates there in the last seven months but it also mentioned the fact that prison is worse. We're sitting there with with staff disease or I guess that's a bacterial infection which was spreading unchecked through the population. And another problem is that you know when people are put on antibiotics to treat this condition. The prisons often make it very difficult for them to keep that taking their drugs. And if they don't finish the course of antibiotics what we're contributing to is the emergence of drug resistant bacteria which is a serious problem which is happening in our prison system as well.

We'll see if we go real quick and get one more caller champagne wine 1. Hello. Yes hi. I'll try to make this quick. When you were talking about California earlier in the program and that strength of the Indian out there for four correction workers it made me wonder how dangerous is it to work in a prison. Because I know here in Illinois just recently the pension program for correction workers was beefed up because they claim it's quite dangerous. So if you have any information about that I appreciate it. It is quite dangerous my book does contain the figures from a number of inmate assaults on prison correctional officers and. And there have been deaths as well although they've cut down on some of those. It's also extremely stressful kind of a job. And there have been studies that show the divorce rate is particularly hard that some of these people have psychological programs but this kind of

macho code which prevents them from Austin for help. So the correctional officers Life is not an easy one and I believe that the crisis that we have in our prison system makes it more difficult than it needs to be. OK thanks a lot. Just to finish up I guess we were still dealing with the public seems to be that was dealing with dealing with the public attitude to justice issues and to security that it seems that people who are running for office like to play on going back to your earlier comments about how no politician wants to seem to be soft on crime. You can always appeal to people and bet that that sort of basis. Do you think that that's likely to change the public attitude I mean. Well I think that the best hope for that changing is the escalating cost at some point people are going to realize that every dollar they spend on their prisons with the dollar that they're not spending on their schools on their health care or on their social services or their infrastructure. Fifty seven billion dollars is a lot of money and you know next year they'll do another study you know be 65

billion dollars at some point people are going to say hey you know this is crazy. We can't go on doing this. That's what my belief is and I'm trying to educate people through this book as to the facts of the system so that we can at least start a debate. And I think you know this program. Thank you very much for having me because it has enabled me to get my message across to you to your listeners and perhaps provoke some debate there. Well we appreciate you giving us your time and it's been absolutely my pleasure. Thank you very much. Our guest Alan Elsner He is national correspondent for Reuters news agency whose book is titled gates of injustice the crisis in America's prisons. Prentiss all is the publisher on the book.