Burress Is Still Finding His Way

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. — Plaxico Burress spent two hours each day he served in prison running 300-yard sprints and catching passes from inmates who regarded themselves as some of the N.F.L.’s legendary quarterbacks.

“We had a couple of guys who thought they were Sammy Baugh, scrambling Fran Tarkenton, John Elway, Dan Marino,” Burress said. “I played with them all.”

Now Burress is back to playing with a real, live N.F.L. quarterback and working to become integrated into his new offense.

Burress, who signed with the Jets this summer after serving 20 months on a gun charge at Oneida Correctional Facility in Rome, N.Y., had a strong debut and contributed to the offense in ways that transcend statistics, like drawing coverage away from his teammates. But the transition has at times been uncomfortable for the Jets, and Burress and Mark Sanchez are still in the process of developing chemistry in their connection.

“He knows we’re Week 2 of a marathon,” Sanchez said. “He’s in it for the long haul. He has a really good feel for this and the longevity of the season, so he’s not fazed about it at all.”

In the Jets’ 27-24 win over the Dallas Cowboys in their season opener, Burress had four receptions for 72 yards, all of them in the second half. He caught a 26-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter that started the Jets’ 17-point comeback.

Last Sunday, Burress did not have a reception in the Jets’ 32-3 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, the first time since January 2006 that he did not have a catch. That was because of the Jaguars’ bracketing him with cornerback-safety coverage, a show of respect that opened the field for tight end Dustin Keller, who had six catches for 101 yards and a touchdown.

Burress played only about two-thirds of the Jets’ offensive snaps, while Santonio Holmes played about three-quarters of the team’s plays. The Jets often deploy multiple tight end packages that force Burress to the sideline. But Burress, who led the Giants with 12 touchdown catches (and the one that sealed a Super Bowl victory over the New England Patriots) in the 2007 season, has acknowledged that his reduced role with the Jets has been an adjustment.

“I’ve always been a guy that’s been on the field all the time,” said Burress, who is especially dangerous in the red zone. “I just take it as I’m just not in a certain package or whatever it may be. Maybe I don’t fit the scheme of whatever they’re trying to do at that particular point.”

Indeed, the Jets’ coaches appear to still be learning how to use Burress. At times, Coach Rex Ryan has tried to force him the ball. One sequence that crystallized that notion came early in the fourth quarter Sunday, when the Jets had a 29-3 lead.

Sanchez threw twice to Burress while near the Jaguars’ end zone. After overthrowing an open Burress on first down, Sanchez tried to connect with a well-covered Burress in the corner of the end zone on third-and-goal from the 5.

“We were in the red zone, and he’s obviously a red-zone target for us,” the offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer said of that play. “We were still working on some things.”

The Jets may have an opportunity to get Burress more involved this weekend in Oakland because of some mismatches he presents with the Raiders’ secondary.

For years in Oakland, man-to-man coverage with a safety deep in the middle of the field has been the standard look of the defense. That means the Raiders may be relying on the 6-foot-1 cornerbacks Stanford Routt and Chris Johnson to cover the 6-5 Burress.

“If you’re a wide receiver, these are the kind of games you love to play in,” Burress said.

Sunday will be the latest step in Burress’s return to the N.F.L., and it could provide a telling indication about where he fits in the Jets’ offense. He said learning the verbiage of the playbook had been the most difficult on-field aspect of his comeback.

He has also had to build a rapport with Sanchez, the latest quarterback he has worked with over the past two years. Except the stakes, and the setting, are much different now.

EXTRA POINTS

Rex Ryan indicated that center Nick Mangold, who has a sprained right ankle, was unlikely to play on Sunday. Mangold did not practice for a second straight day. Colin Baxter would start if Mangold, who has started 82 straight games, cannot play. ... The Jets’ punters and kickers went to the Newark Bears’ baseball stadium to practice kicking on infield dirt. The Raiders’ O.co Coliseum also serves as the home to the Athletics, who played the Texas Rangers on Thursday in their last game there this season.

Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office

DEDHAM — Fall is the time of year when many people shift their focus back to education. Elementary school teachers traditionally emphasize the basics: the three R’s, reading, writing and arithmetic.

In the field of corrections, when it comes to the basics, we’re concerned year-round with our own three R’s: Responsibility, Reentry and Recidivism.

At the Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office, we believe that teaching responsibility through our varied reentry programs is the key to reducing recidivism, the fancy term for inmates continuing to commit crimes after finishing their jail sentence.

We believe the philosophy of inmate reentry – a series of programs designed to challenge inmates to address their anti-social behavior and other deficiencies in order to reduce their likelihood of reoffending – is the best way to reduce crime.
At the Norfolk County Correctional Center, reentry starts the day an inmate walks in the door. Using an objective assessment tool, we immediately determine his risk of reoffending.

Next, we gather background data -- including criminal record, education and employment history, alcohol/drug problems, companions, family status and attitudes. We enter that data into a second assessment tool to find out which problems the inmate needs to confront and tackle.

Through a variety of educational programs, we emphasize that it’s time for the inmate to take responsibility for his criminal actions. If the inmate does not change his thinking, he’s not going to change his life. If he doesn’t address his behavior issues, he’s bound to return to jail.

Approximately 85 percent of our inmates come to us with drug and alcohol problems. Our substance abuse education gives them the opportunity to effectively deal with those problems. Anger management and domestic violence education points out how their failure to control their emotions leads to their criminal actions.

Courses on compulsive behavior, such as excessive gambling or reckless driving, are designed to make them understand why they act the way they do and how to change their anti-social behavior.

We also carry the more traditional educational programs such as vocational training in culinary arts, HVAC and landscaping, and fundamental classroom courses in adult basic education and GED (high school equivalency diploma) study courses.

This tends to eliminate employment barriers and inmate excuses about not being able to find work because they don’t have a high school diploma or job skills.

We believe the traditional classes are complements to our behavior education programs when it comes to stemming the tide of criminal conduct. The U.S. Department of Justice feels we’re on the right track, and made us one of 13 correctional agencies throughout the nation to receive a Second Chance Act grant to fund these behavior education classes.

In addition, we have entered into an agreement with Northeastern University to help us measure which programs work best and which need to be adjusted.

Even with a new curriculum centered around inmate behavior issues, the key to success will always be making inmates understand and accept responsibility for their actions. Otherwise, the choices are bleak: More crime. More prisons. More taxpayer dollars wasted.

Instead, just as they do in elementary school, we need to focus on the three R’s. It’s the only way we in the corrections field can reach the head of the class.

Youth and punishment: The ‘hypercriminalization’ of black and brown boys

It’s been another travel day, which means more good airplane reading.

The book that’s kept me company while in flight today is Victor M. Rios’ fascinating “Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys.” Rios is a UC Santa Barbara sociologist with unique perspective on this topic.



A former gang member from Oakland, California, he learned firsthand in his mid-teens what a small break from police and educators can mean for a kid on his way to prison.

Rios made it out of gang life through the support of interested teachers, and a lucky break from a cop who gave him a last chance. His friends weren’t so fortunate. In the book, he describes how nearly ten years ago, he took stock of what had become of his former homies, 68 boys whose names were still scrawled in marker on a dilapidated refrigerator in one old friend’s garage.

Seven had been murdered, including his best friend. Six had permanent injuries from gunshot wounds. A dozen were addicted to drugs.

Only two had finished high school, and only he’d made it to college. He also learned that 28 of his former fellow gang members were doing time. The remaining 40 had all been locked up at one point or another, including Rios, a onetime car thief with several stints in juvenile hall.

What had driven them down this road? All had been subject to the same hardscrabble life in the Oakland flatlands, but there was more to it than poverty and poor role models. Seeking an answer, Rios spent three years studying the lives of 40 black and Latino teenage boys in the Oakland area.

He concluded that in communities like the ones he and they grew up in, a general culture of punishment trickles down from schools, law enforcement, community and other institutions that deeply affects these young men’s perceptions of themselves and their world long before they get involved in crime, and ultimately helps push many of them toward it.

Rios, who describes this phenomenon as a “youth control complex,” writes:

Young people, who become pinballs within this youth control complex, experience what I refer to as hypercriminalization, the process by which an individual’s everyday behaviors and styles become ubiquitously treated as deviant, risky, threatening or criminal, across social contexts.

This hypercriminalization, in turn, has a profound impact on young people’s perceptions, worldviews, and life outcomes. The youth control complex creates an overarching system of regulating the lives of marginalized young people, what I refer to as punitive social control.

Hypercriminalization involves constant punishment. Punishment, in this study, is understood as the process by which individuals come to feel stigmatized, outcast, shamed, defeated, or hopeless as a result of negative interactions and sanctions imposed by individuals who represent institutions of social control.

Rios also gets into the U.S. black and Latino incarceration rate (Latinos now make up the majority of people being sentenced to federal prison), citing familiar but still unsettling statistics: Among men ages 20 to 34, one of every nine black men is incarcerated, one of every 25 Latino men is incarcerated, and one of every 56 white men is incarcerated.

The incarceration of male adults directly affects the boys who follow them, as Rios describes:

When the forty boys in the main group were asked to write down the names of close friends and family members who were currently incarcerated, all of them knew at least six people.

One of them, Spider, knew thirty-two. He wrote down their name and age and rated, from 1 to 5, how close he felt to them. When the boys were asked to respond to the question, “From 1 to 5, 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest, how likely do you think you are to get incarcerated in the next few months?” all of them responded with at least a 4, meaning that they all felt that their chances of being incarcerated were high or extremely high.

He continues: The young men in this study discussed prison as a familiar place. Since many of the adults they looked up to were convicts, as opposed to college graduates, and police and school personnel often treated them like prisoners, the youths became familiar with the culture and rules of prison life and even attached a sense of glamour and admiration to it, before ever serving a day in an adult jail or prison.

Rios calls for improving non-punitive support systems for young people who are at risk, arguing that the zero-tolerance policies embraced by schools and law enforcement that are aimed at deterring juveniles from crime may in fact be having the opposite effect.

The book was published this year by New York University Press. You can purchase book @ sureshotbooks.com

California needs more time to fix prison overcrowding

Bunks are placed in open areas at Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, Calif. The state is under court order to reduce the prison population by 34,000 in two years. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Reporting from Sacramento -- California is unlikely to meet a federal court mandate to reduce its prison population by 34,000 inmates within two years, so state officials should ask for more time, the Legislature's top advisor said Friday.

Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor also challenged Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to reduce the number of inmates sent to out-of-state contract prisons, saying California instead should consider exporting more felons.

"The administration's push to reduce the number of these out-of-state beds while at the same time reducing overcrowding in the prisons makes little sense at the present time in our view," said the report by the Legislative Analyst's Office.

Brown has not decided whether to seek an extension of the court-imposed deadline, but believes the report "confirms that California is on the right track" with its plan to send some state inmates to county jails, said spokeswoman Elizabeth Ashford.

Taylor's report agreed that shifting thousands of low-level offenders to serve their sentences in county jails would move the state closer to complying with the court order. But the analysis "indicates that the realignment plan alone is unlikely to reduce overcrowding sufficiently within the two-year deadline."

Sending some offenders to jails and local parole programs could reduce the prison population by 32,000 inmates, the report said, but that won't be accomplished in two years and it would still leave the state "several thousand" inmates short of the court's requirement.

California currently has more than 143,000 inmates in 33 prisons. In May, the U.S Supreme Court upheld a ruling by a federal three-judge panel requiring the state to reduce overcrowding, although the justices urged some flexibility on the deadline.

Compliance could be harder to achieve if the state follows through on plans to reduce the number of inmates sent to contract prisons, the report warned. The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has contracts to hold 10,000 California inmates in out-of-state prisons and about 4,000 in contract prisons in the state.

Taylor recommended that the Legislature continue, "and possibly expand," the out-of-state program "at least until such time as [the Corrections Department] is able to comply with the … inmate population reduction targets."

As California reduces its prison population and frees up beds, it would make sense "to start to bring inmates back," said department spokesman Oscar Hidalgo. "But there are no immediate plans, and we will not do that" if it risks being in noncompliance, he said.

Taylor's office also recommended that new contracts for prison-construction projects be put on hold until a review can determine whether they will be needed when the inmate-reduction mandates are met.

Ashford said the Brown administration was working with the Legislature "to guarantee that new facilities will only be constructed if absolutely necessary."

The War on Drugs

The War on Drugs is a War on Minorities and the Poor

Dr. Boyce Watkins cites some troubling statistics on the War on Drugs over at The Huffington Post:

African-Americans are 62 percent of drug offenders sent to state prisons, yet they represent only 12 percent of the U. S. population.
Black men are sent to state prisons on drug charges at 13 times the rate of White men.

Drug transactions among Blacks are easier for police to target because they more often happen in public than do drug transactions between Whites.

The disparities are particularly tragic in individual states where Black men are sent to federal prison on drug charges at a rate 57 times greater than White men, according to Human Rights Watch.

More than 25.4 million Americans have been arrested on drug charges since 1980; about one third of them were Black.

The Black populations in state prisons are majorly disproportionate:

In Georgia, the Black population is 29 percent, the Black prison population is 54 percent; Arkansas 16 percent -52 percent; Louisiana 33 percent-76 percent; Mississippi 36 percent-75 percent; Alabama 26 percent -65 percent; Tennessee 16 percent -63 percent; Kentucky 7 percent-36 percent; South Carolina 30 percent-69 percent; North Carolina 22 percent-64 percent; and Virginia 20 percent-68 percent.

According to the Global Commission on Drug Policy arresting and incarcerating people fills prisons and destroys lives but does not reduce the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organizations.

The average daily cost per state prison inmate per day in the U.S. is $67.55.

State prisons held 253,300 inmates for drug offenses in 2007. That means states spent approximately $17 million per day to imprison drug offenders, or more than $6.2 billion per year.

This war disproportionately targets blacks and other minorities and the poor across all racial demographics.

But massive incarceration, a depressed economy, and the widespread violence is something that should give all of us pause, even those of us who have never been the target of a midnight no knock raid or a life shattered by drug violence, police abuse, or the myriad other tragedies this war has brought upon our society.

Dr. Watkins calls it apartheid, and in many ways he’s correct. But it’s more than that, too. The impact of the drug war is global, and the global poor pay the highest price.

Thank goodness the tide appears to be turning:

“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world,” a recent report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy concludes. “Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won.

” Each year that we fail to face this reality, the report says, “billions of dollars are wasted on ineffective programs,” “millions of citizens are sent to prison unnecessarily,” and “hundreds of thousands of people die from preventable overdoses and diseases.”

Visit www.sureshotbooks.com for books to inmates

Facebook closes account for SC inmate

Michael Jason Maxwell maintained two pages and appeared to have made his posts from his mobile phone.
By PrisonTalk2k Staff

BISHOPVILLE, S.C. — Facebook officials closed down the account of an inmate in a maximum security prision in South Carolina on Wednesday. The man had been maintaining not one but two Facebook profiles that boasted hundreds of friends, including a Playboy pinup.

Michael Jason Maxwell appeared to have made his posts from his mobile phone. He even included photos of his cell in some of his postings.

In one post, he asked a friend about his new gun, and on another he wrote he needed money "ASAP" according to The Post and Courier.

The social media site pulled down Maxwell's page Wednesday after the paper alerted them to his activities. The victims family was the first to find out about Maxwell's online presence.

He in incarcerated at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, S.C.

Clark Newsom, the communications director for the state Department of Corrections said prison officials searched Maxwell's cell, but the mobile phone still hasn't been found.

Inmate's Need Education Programs

The U.S. has 2.2 million inmates behind bars more than any other country. While our population is only 5 percent of the world, we have 25 percent of world's total incarceration -- and the situation is very complicated.

Half of all state and federal prisons are more than 100 percent full. At the Ohio state prison at Lebanon, 30 percent of the inmates are killers, rapists and juvenile sex offenders. They live in 6-foot-by-10-foot cells originally designed for one, but now holding two using bunk beds, a stainless steel toilet, a small writing desk and an equally small personal cabinet. They are allowed a small TV, provided they have the cash to buy one; most do not.

The former head of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections recently said, "We don't rehabilitate anybody; we just create the conditions where prisoners can rehabilitate themselves." Most don't.

Nationwide, 700,000 prisoners are released every year about one third of the prison population. Of those, two thirds will be back in three years. One third of drug addicts will be back in less than one year, and 70 percent of those returning are felons.

The California Prison system is at more than 200 percent of capacity. The California Salinas Valley Prison has 220 inmates sleeping in triple-decker bunks on the floor of a basketball court. No bars, no steel doors, no nothing. It is called "warehousing."

In prisons that warehouse inmates, inmates are likely to be worse off when they leave than when they entered. They will have lived out their sentences with violent criminals. When they leave, they have no money, no job prospects, no plans and very little hope.

This groupie method always leads to gang formation, and there are frequently three gangs blacks, whites and Latino. Since the blacks outnumber the others, most of the violence is between the whites and Latinos. At the Ironwood State Prison in California's Mojave Desert, there were 35,000 inmate attacks in the past year. Homicides have increased more than 50 percent in the past five years.

Drugs are everywhere inside the prison walls heroin, marijuana, ecstasy and crystal meth. Almost all the gang killings are drug-related. Drug addiction claims 35 percent of the inmates. It is a bone-fide business grossing $300 million per year and a growth market. The profits are huge because the prices are extreme. One gram of heroin has a street price of $100. In a prison, it's $1,000 the same for a half-ounce of crystal meth.

Guards are virtually unable to control the outbreak of violence until dozens of guards are assembled, which takes enough time for some to kill others. At Ironwood, the ratio of inmates to guards is 100:1.

After a gang war, hundreds of inmates are put into total segregation, known as solitary confinement. It is being utilized much more often 80,000 now are being held that way. While only 4 percent of the total might seem like a small number, the effects of solitary almost always are devastating. Solitary one hour each day of physical exercise, by themselves, heavily guarded and 23 hours per day alone. No TV, no speaking, even to guards, no nothing! The majority of those held in solitary for extended periods come out crazed paranoid, schizophrenic or manic-depressive. Those that were crazed when they went in, come out even more so.

Those who are placed in solitary find that the single event they can control is injuring themselves this will get them some personal attention, perhaps a stay in a bed in a prison hospital ward. Those in solitary for three or more years have a 70 percent suicide rate.

The basic problems in our prison system have existed for decades. These have been studied by prison officials, social scientists, politicians and inmates. A few experiments proved successful, but most of the problems continue and are exacerbated by overcrowding.

As a result, after arguments before a California Federal District Court, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court, there was a definitive ruling on May 23.

The state of California has been ordered to reduce inmates to a level of 135.7 percent of design capacity. This requires the release of lease 37,000 prisoners. It was another damnable 5-4 decision, which might be changed after a new president or two.

In the meantime, California and likely several more states in the next year or two must figure out what to do with thousands of felons.