Wednesday, March 06, 2024
California Transformed Prisons to the ‘Norway Model,’ Insiders Reveal the Deadly Cost
This is an old, old story. Claims that "humane" treatment of serious criminals will "reform" them go back at least a century, with the Glasgow Barlinnie experiement being best known. The Barlinnie experiment pulled out all stops, including significant funding, to rehabilitate offenders, but in the end most offenders backslid to criminal ways once released. The sad truth is that it needs harsh treament in prison to have much deterrent effect on future offending
It is true that treatment of offenders is lighter and recidivism is lower in Switzerland and the Scandinavian nations but the populations concerned are not the same. In both Glasgow and the United States, levels of criminality are higher to start with. Glasgow Saturday nights are notorious
Prison reforms in California aimed at rehabilitation and release are a ticking time bomb according to current and formerly incarcerated individuals, whistleblowers, active and retired correctional officers, and other staff who spoke to The Epoch Times.
As part of the reforms, which are based on Norway’s model, California’s prisons are moving away from punishment and toward rehabilitation, education, and re-entry.
The transformation dovetails with a decade of sentencing and parole reforms as authorities move to depopulate and close facilities statewide.
But the reality inside California’s prisons, insiders say, is increasingly dangerous for both inmates and staff.
In the first six weeks of 2024, there were six homicides in California prisons, according to the corrections department. Five were inmate-on-inmate homicides and one involved a correctional officer shooting an inmate to prevent him from fatally stabbing another inmate.
Additionally, an Epoch Times review of the department’s statistics reveals a dramatic increase over the past several years in total incident reports, as well as in important categories including assault and battery on inmates and officers, use of force, and sexual assaults.
From January to October 2023, the most recent data available, there were 17,993 total incident reports—compared to 14,138 and 12,717 for the same periods in 2022 and 2021, respectively.
Assault and battery incidents on corrections officers and non-inmates have risen steadily from 2021 through 2023, the latter increasing 35 percent from January to October 2023 over the previous year. In the same period, assaults on inmates rose 29 percent, use of force increased 46.3 percent, and sexual assaults jumped 62 percent.
Patrick “Jimmy” Kitlas, who began serving a life sentence in 2007 and is now eligible for parole, told The Epoch Times by phone that there have been many “really sweeping and drastic” policy changes—but they are often contradictory or not implemented.
“This place has definitely become a less structured, a less secure, and a much more violent place,” he said from San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, where he’s been since 2015.
Mr. Kitlas and others who spoke to The Epoch Times blamed a top-heavy administration disconnected from reality on the ground.
“The guys up top who aren’t actually in the buildings with the officers and inmates providing custodial supervision, they’re making a lot of insane and violence-provoking policies without regard to the staff that have to enforce them,” Mr. Kitlas said.
A new policy will often hit inmates and staff at the same time, he said, resulting in chaos.
“No one ever seems to really have a firm grasp of where the policy came from, what its purpose is, and how is the best way to implement it—which is super dangerous,” he said.
San Quentin is California’s oldest prison and one of the country’s most notorious, conducting all of the state’s executions since 1937. Now, it’s the blueprint for California corrections reform, offering innovative programming to help inmates like Mr. Kitlas transform their lives, overcome trauma, and become community leaders.
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Appeals Court Overturns Jan. 6 Defendant’s Sentence, Potentially Impacting Dozens of Cases
An appeals court in Washington unanimously ruled that a Jan. 6 defendant’s sentence was improperly enhanced, a move that could impact numerous other Jan. 6 cases.
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that Larry Brock, who was convicted for a range of crimes related to Jan. 6, improperly had additional charges of “interference with the administration of justice.” The judge who wrote the court’s opinion wrote that the charge doesn’t apply to a sentencing enhancement, however, and struck it down.
“Brock challenges both the district court’s interpretation of Section 1512(c)(2)’s elements and the sufficiency of the evidence to support that conviction,” wrote the judge, Patricia Millett.
The judge, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, concluded that any interference with Congress’ certification of the 2020 electoral votes isn’t tantamount to a sentencing enhancement.
“Because Section 2J1.2’s text, commentary, and context establish that the ‘administration of justice’ does not extend to Congress’s counting and certification of electoral college votes, the district court erred in applying Section 2J1.2(b)(2)’s three-level sentencing enhancement to Brock’s Section 1512(c)(2) conviction,” the judge wrote.
The judges, in siding with Mr. Brock, wrote that Congress’ function on Jan. 6 was not judicial but was only a part of the 2020 presidential election process.
“Taken as a whole, the multi-step process of certifying electoral college votes—as important to our democratic system of government as it is—bears little resemblance to the traditional understanding of the administration of justice as the judicial or quasi-judicial investigation or determination of individual rights,” the panel concluded.
Law enforcement officials who were there at the Capitol on that day, they added, were “to protect the lawmakers and their process, not to investigate individuals’ rights or to enforce Congress’s certification decision.”
“After all,” the judges wrote, “law enforcement is present for security purposes for a broad variety of governmental proceedings that do not involve the ‘administration of justice’—presidential inaugurations, for example, and the pardoning of the Thanksgiving Turkey.”
Now, Mr. Brock’s sentence under the statute will be vacated and will be remanded to the district court for resentencing, according to Friday’s order.
But it’s not clear whether Mr. Brock’s sentence will be reduced or whether it will apply to a number of other people who were charged with interference in the administration of justice related to the Capitol breach. However, the ruling could impact plea negotiations for future Jan. 6 defendants who are charged with the felony.
Dozens of Jan. 6 defendants have been convicted and sentenced for interference in the administration of justice, according to data provided by the Department of Justice. It may mean that their time in prison and other penalties need to be reduced.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has often asked judges to apply the enhancement charges to the defendants, saying that the Congressional session on Jan. 6, 2021, to count electoral votes and certify the election was the same as a judicial proceeding.
But Mr. Brock’s lawyers successfully argued in an appeal that the charges shouldn’t impact his sentence after he was given a two-year prison term in 2023. At the time, the lower court judge who convicted and sentenced Mr. Brock calculated that the obstruction charge meant he should spend more time in jail.
The court made the sentencing decision as it simultaneously upheld Mr. Brock’s felony conviction regarding his activity on Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands breached the U.S. Capitol during the certification of the election.
During court arguments in September, Mr. Brock’s lawyer noted that he committed no violence on Jan. 6 and said the man believed the 2020 election was stolen. “Mr. Brock thought he was acting righteously, patriotically and with a eminently proper purpose,” attorney Charles Burnham said at the time, according to reports.
That argument was rejected by the panel of judges on Friday. “Brock participated in a riot that sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election by force, and that he was himself prepared to take violent action to achieve that goal,” the judges wrote.
Because of his social media posts about the election, the court added, “Where a defendant announces his intent to use violence to obstruct a congressional proceeding, comes equipped for violence, and then actually obstructs that proceeding, the evidence supports a finding that he acted with an impermissible purpose or knowledge of the wrongfulness of his actions.”
Some Jan. 6 defendants have argued in court motions that the law have been improperly applied to charge them with felonies. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in a Jan. 6 defendants’ appeal in April on the application of the law, which could also impact special counsel Jack Smith’s case against former President Donald Trump as he faces two obstruction charges in Washington.
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UK: How a tranquil oasis for female swimmers became a front line in the culture wars: Bitter row over whether trans women are allowed to bathe in historic single-sex pond comes to a ferocious head...
Ever since she moved to London more than 20 years ago, Venice Allan has made a point of carving out time to visit a place she finds brings her particular pleasure.
It means a lengthy trek across the city on the Tube from her home in south London. But such is the magical pull of Kenwood Ladies Pond, a natural swimming lake on Hampstead Heath, that she goes as often as she can.
‘It’s the most beautiful, special place,’ says the 48-year-old jewellery designer. ‘It really feels like an oasis.’
Many hundreds of other women have long felt the same, among them local celebrities including Helena Bonham-Carter and Emma Thompson, who live in and around this fashionable – and achingly liberal – part of London.
And certainly, for decades the Ladies’ Pond has been a unique space. Designated women only in 1926, for nearly a century it has been billed as a place of refuge and security for women of all ages, something underlined on the sign at the entrance which makes clear that men – who have access to their own male-only pond, as well as a mixed pond nearby – are not allowed ‘beyond this point’.
You might think that message could not be clearer – except, of course, that the definition of ‘woman’ has latterly become a vexatious, highly contentious issue.
So perhaps it was only a matter of time before it reached the once tranquil setting of the Ladies' Pond, which now finds itself mired in an ongoing and increasingly ugly row.
On one side are 11 of the 12-strong committee members of the Kenwood Ladies' Pond Association (KLPA) – backed, it must be said, by a sizeable contingent of other regular swimmers – who have declared that anyone who identifies as a woman has a right to swim there and that to suggest otherwise is a breach of the 2010 Equality Act.
On the other is an equally large band who believe that the committee has become overtly politicised and ‘captured’ by gender ideology, and is trying to strong-arm those who do not subscribe to their views.
The latter insist that the committee is ignoring the wishes of members who want the pond to become a female-only space again.
They also accuse the committee of stoking division between women who swim all-year round and those who are unable, or unwilling, to swim every week. They point to a failed attempt by the committee to establish a form of ‘pond apartheid’ which would have limited the rights of fair-weather swimmers to have any say in Association matters.
The row is set to come to a head this Sunday at the pond’s annual general meeting, at which one committee member, Janice Williams, has submitted a resolution asking that the organisation recognise that the definition of woman can - in this context - only apply to those born biologically female.
There has been some wrangling over whether the resolution can be aired at all: co-chairs Pauline Latchem and Beth Feresten have made clear the proposal may be unlawful, sending a note to AGM members reading ‘Pending further legal advice, the amendment may be removed from consideration at the AGM’ – something Janice labels ‘nonsensical’.
‘How can a vote be unlawful?’ she asks. ‘It is a cornerstone of the democratic process.’
It is certainly all a very long way from the genteel pond’s inception. Along with the other bathing ponds on Hampstead Heath, the Ladies’ Pond was originally created in the 17th and 18th centuries as one of the reservoirs to meet London’s growing demand for water.
Some were repurposed for swimming, used mainly by male swimmers, until in 1926, the Kenwood Pond was designated as women-only.
Over the years thousands have visited, enjoying the magic of swimming in fresh water in the heart of a busy urban capital.
‘You walk down the pedestrian lane to get to the entrance, and it is like being in the heart of the countryside,' says Sally Kennedy, a 46-year-old teacher and devoted swimmer who loves the pond so much that she moved to north London from her native east London ten years ago so she could be nearer to it.
Three years ago, the writer Esther Freud wrote of the way it unified women across the social and age spectrum. ‘At the height of summer, as many as 2,000 women of every shape and size, all classes, all ages, from across London, across the country, even from abroad, arrive to swim and sunbathe on the meadow,’ she wrote in an article for Vogue magazine.
In more recent times, however, controversy has started to lap round the edges of this once untroubled space. In 1989, the running of Hampstead Heath and its ponds came under the control of the City of London Corporation which, in 2005, to the dismay of many, instigated a ‘self-policed’ charging system suggesting a contribution of between £1 and £2 be made by swimmers each time they visited.
Many believed this went against the fundamental ethos of the pond, and protests followed, but the City of London went on to make the charges compulsory in March 2020. Entry is now strictly controlled by barriers and a gate, a turn of events that is the subject of an ongoing legal challenge.
But this controversy pales when set against the backdrop of today’s increasingly toxic row about access, which dates back to 2019 when the City of London adopted a new policy to allow trans women (biological males who identify as women) to use the pond, citing the Equality Act.
The policy was overseen by Edward Lord, a City of London councillor and diversity champion (pronouns ‘they/them’) who launched an online survey consultation on whether trans people should be able to access services relating to their gender identity.
On paper the answer was an overwhelming yes, as 12,390 had voted in favour of transgender users, and 8,610 against – until it emerged that nearly 19,000 other responses had been disregarded as users were deemed to have not answered the survey in full.
Either way, Lord was very clear on the issue: ‘It shouldn’t be a debate,’ they declared. ‘Trans women are women; trans men are men.’ The self-ID policy was duly ushered in, which allowed any male to access the Ladies’ Pond merely on their claim to be a woman.
A series of protests followed, including a demonstration during which around 20 women ‘identified’ as men next to the men’s pool of Hampstead Heath.
One woman sported a pantomime beard; another wore a lime green mankini (a Borat-style male version of a bikini) before demanding access to the nearby men’s pond to highlight the absurdity of ‘gender self-identification’. They were promptly ejected by staff.
Undeterred, Venice Allan went on to found Let Women Swim – a campaign to reclaim the Kenwood Ladies’ Pond as a female-only space by 2025, in time for the centenary of its foundation.
In August 2022 she staged another protest, in which 130 women lined the pedestrian lane to the pool. ‘The only buoy allowed’ read one placard, sported by a woman with a lifebuoy round her neck.
‘I don’t want to live in a female-only society, I’m not a separatist,’ Venice told the Mail this week. ‘But it’s a special, iconic place that has now become unnecessarily politicised. It’s also deeply ironic that the City of London talks about inclusion, when its policy clearly discriminates about women.
‘Trans women can swim in the mixed pond, but the female-only pond is the only place where women of certain religious faiths like Orthodox Jewish women and Muslim women can swim, as they cannot be in a space with someone who is biologically male. I know for a fact that some women from those backgrounds now no longer come.’
Venice herself is clear that she has swum in the presence of biological males. ‘I’ve been there when someone with hormone-induced moobs is at the edge of the pond letting it all hang out and it is hard to feel that it isn’t a statement,’ she says.
Another regular swimmer, who asked not to be named, said that she had watched in amazement as a man in tiny trunks showing his genitalia entered the pond unchallenged. He then went on to sunbathe nearby.
Such infractions – as they are seen by many pond users – have fundamentally changed the feel of the place, according to Sally Kennedy.
‘For many women the pond serves two quite separate functions,’ she says. ‘Yes it’s a place to swim, but it’s also this very special outside female-only space in which to just relax, hang out, and that’s really rare. In the wider world we have our guard up but not there. That has now changed, certainly for me.’
Venice acknowledges that others beg to differ. ‘Leaving aside the politics on the committee, there is a conflict amid pond users which is pretty much divided by age,’ she says. ‘There are many women who have been swimming there for decades who are bitterly opposed to the changes. Many – but not all – younger women are not as bothered.’
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Popular Australian media figure tells renters to ‘love your landlord’
Unusual wisdom in a public figure
Former Sunrise host David Koch has weighed into the rental crisis debate, urging renters to “love your landlord” and instead point the blame at governments.
Writing for The Nightly, Koch said it may sound like “heresy, but tenants should direct their anger towards all three levels of government — not their landlords — when it comes to skyrocketing rents”.
“Governments, not landlords, have been derelict in not foreseeing and planning to avoid this rental crisis,” he said.
“It’s complex and there is no silver bullet solution. But so-called ‘greedy’ landlords are being unfairly targeted as the scapegoat. You probably have one in your family, or among your friends, and I bet they have increased the rent to cover rising loan repayments. But vilifying property investors is going to make the crisis a whole lot worse. The reality is many of those landlords are now saying it’s simply not worth it and are selling up, which just adds to the problem.”
Koch noted that there were around 2.2 million landlords in Australia, according to Australian Taxation Office (ATO) data, or one fifth of the population, the vast majority of whom own just one investment property.
“They aren’t property moguls, they’re ordinary Australians trying to build a nest egg,” he said.
He argued the reason rents were rising — in some cases by more than 50 per cent — was not “greed” but a combination of “rising interest rates, a lack of new developments because of a shortage of land, delays in approvals, banks reducing borrowing capacity, and developers going broke”, as well as “a lack of commitment from governments to develop enough affordable low-cost rental housing”.
Koch did not mention Australia’s record immigration intake of 518,000 net overseas arrivals last year, which a growing number of experts have conceded is a key driver of housing demand.
He echoed comments last month from billionaire property developer Harry Triguboff, who said a large reason developers were going broke was the lack of investors due to the low net return of about 2.5 per cent.
“The only way to quickly resolve the rental crisis is to love your landlord and encourage more property investors to make more stock available,” Koch said.
“So when debating the merits of negative gearing, be careful what you wish for. Between 1996 and 2021, private investors provided 1.1 million rentals. Community groups added 41,000 but there was a reduction of 53,000 in government properties. Rather than castigate landlords, governments should be trying to match them in the amount of new properties coming onto the market.”
He added that the federal government’s “much-vaunted $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund will only provide an additional 30,000 social and affordable homes which is tiny compared with what is needed”.
“So private investors will have to continue to do the heavy lifting,” he said.
The piece, for Seven West Media’s newly launched online news site, received mixed reaction online.
“The Nightly — off to a flyer delivering bangers,” former union boss Tim Lyons wrote on X. “Perspectives we don’t hear from new, interesting voices.”
Another user wrote, “This daring pro-boomer pro-landlord position is exactly the sort of fearless principled stand that has been missing from the Aussie media landscape. Well done to the editorial team at The Nightly.”
Anne Crarey, executive general manager of property services at Little Real Estate, told news.com.au last month that the rental crisis was “only getting worse” and “I don’t see anything on the horizon that’s going to change where we’re at”.
Ms Crarey also argued the solution to the crisis has to be “encouraging people to be buying investment properties”.
“I don’t foresee any other way out of it,” she said.
“I don’t think the government’s going to be able to build what we need to build to make the rental crisis go away, so the solution firmly lands with the government in regards to making incentives to invest in properties more enticing.”
Australia’s rental crisis has seen a “marked escalation” with an increasing number of suburbs recording the “highest possible distress score”, according to Suburbtrends’ February Rental Pain Index.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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