From the Topeca-Capital Journal
Jan. 26, 2013
Tag Archives: Kansas
APNewsBreak: Former Idaho prison heads transferred
By REBECCA BOONE (in: Associated Press)
June 11, 2010
BOISE, Idaho — A private prison company being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union amid allegations of extreme violence at an Idaho lockup has shuffled Idaho’s ousted warden and assistant warden to top posts at federal prisons in Kansas and Nevada.
Phillip Valdez, the former warden at the 2,104-bed Idaho Correctional Center near Boise, has been named assistant warden at the Leavenworth Detention Center, a prison CCA runs for the U.S. Marshals Service in Leavenworth, Kan.
The company didn’t have any open warden positions, so Valdez opted to take the assistant warden spot at the 1,033-bed Kansas prison rather than leave the company, said Corrections Corporation of America spokesman Steve Owens.
ICC’s former assistant warden, Dan Prado, has been named assistant warden at the new Nevada Southern Detention Center, a 1,072-bed facility currently being built at Pahrump, Nev., for the Office of Federal Detention Trustee, an agency under the U.S. Department of Justice.
Neither Valdez nor Prado could be reached by The Associated Press.
CCA announced that Valdez and Prado would no longer be leading the Idaho prison after the $155 million lawsuit was filed earlier this year.
The ACLU and inmates at the prison are asking for class-action status, contending the prison is so violent that it’s been dubbed “gladiator school” by prisoners and that guards expose inmates to beatings from other prisoners as a management tool. The lawsuit also contends CCA has denied adequate medical care to injured inmates as a way to reduce the appearance of injuries.
Read more here…
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Once a Model for Reform, Kansas Cuts Vital Prison Services
This comes from Matt Kelley
April 09, 2010
From the Prison Law Blog
In recent years, Kansas has been a standard-bearer for corrections reform. It’s managed to inspire reformers around the country by reducing recidivism through pre-release education and post-release services — but all that is being jeopardized now by budget cuts that could gut its core programs.
A we’ve written here recently, state budget crises have led to both good and bad cutbacks in prison and parole programs. For many states, the Great Recession has served as a wake-up call to rein in wasteful, destructive incarceration policies. Elsewhere, budget shortfalls have meant cuts to promising, innovative programs that are helping former prisoners succeed and helping defendants avoid jail through alternatives like education, work release and drug treatment.
Kansas, unfortunately, falls into the latter category. Just two years ago, its innovative reentry services had a budget of $12 million. This year, though, such services are getting less than half of that — $5.3 million.
Prior to these cuts, the state was extraordinarily successful: it had reduced recidivism dramatically and cut parole violations by a third. The very programs responsible, though, are now getting the ax. An excellent story by Rick Montgomery in the Kansas City Star paints a bleak picture of these cuts. The bottom line? While it’s too early to tell how the cuts will affect recidivism, unraveling the safety net so suddenly can’t be a good thing. It’s quite likely that instead of funding treatment, the state will simply end up paying for prison cells to house a greater number of people re-committing crime. The price of human suffering and diminished safety is yet another cost — one that doesn’t so readily translate into a cash value.
Even as Kansas’s model is threatened, other states — like Michigan — are making more judicious cuts where they count, closing prisons and focusing on services and treatment. Likewise, California is aiming to address its massive prison problem by reducing the number of prisoners who get sent back for petty parole violations.
Meanwhile, Kansas looks like it’s rapidly losing its status as a model reform state, and instead becoming a symbol of precisely what not to do.
Via Prison Law Blog
Senate Judiciary panel passes bill to eliminate the death penalty
UPDATED: Senate Judiciary panel passes bill to eliminate the death penalty
TOPEKA – The Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill Friday that would abolish the state’s death penalty for crimes committed after July 1.
By a vote of 7-4, the bill now goes to the full Senate for discussion.
Senators had considered two bills: Senate Bill 208, which was debated last year, and Senate Bill 375, which replaces the death penalty with the crime of aggravated murder. The new crime comes with a mandatory life without parole sentence.
The committee tabled the first bill and moved forward Senate Bill 375.
Voting yes were Republican senators Dwayne Umbarger, Thayer; John Vratil, Leawood; Mary Pilcher Cook, Shawnee; Les Donovan, Wichita; Chairman Tim Owens, Overland Park, and Democratic senators Laura Kelly, Topeka and David Haley, Kansas City, Kan.
Voting no were Republican senators Jean Schodorf, Wichita; Derek Schmidt, Independence; Julia Lynn, Olathe and Terry Bruce, Hutchinson.
Schodorf said she was voting no in committee because she already knew she would vote that way on the Senate floor.
Schmidt, who is the chamber’s majority leader, urged the senators not to move the measure forward pointing out it was unlikely to succeed this year.
“The question is not is the death penalty going to be repealed this year,” he said. “The question is at what point does it stop this year.”
Others disagreed.
“People need to be able to review something as serious as a death penalty consideration because this is truly life and death we are talking about,” Owens said.
For more, read Saturday’s Wichita Eagle.
* By Jeannine Koranda