By Michael Cummings, New York Civil Liberties Union at 12:54pm
In New York’s prisons, people caught with too many postage stamps in their cells can land a stint in extreme isolation – the harshest possible punishment in the state prison system.
Extreme isolation – locking one or two people in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day under conditions commonly understood as solitary confinement – should never be a disciplinary tool of first resort. In fact, the cruel and ineffective practice should be eliminated all together.
The New York Civil Liberties Union just concluded an intensive, year-long study of New York’s use of extreme isolation, described in a report released this week, Boxed In: The True Cost of Extreme Isolation in New York’s Prisons.
Over the course of our investigation, we communicated with more than a hundred people who have spent significant amounts of time in extreme isolation. We interviewed prisoners’ family members and corrections staff and reviewed thousands of pages of official records obtained through open records laws. (A companion website excerpts of prisoners’ letters about life in extreme isolation, a library of DOCCS data and records, statistical analyses and a video featuring the voices of family members whose loved ones have been held in extreme isolation.)
We found that the state’s use of extreme isolation endangers prisoners and corrections staff. It undermines prison safety and, ultimately, makes our communities less safe.
Individuals in extreme isolation spend at least 23 hours a day in a cell about the size of a parking spot.  They are deprived of all meaningful human contact or mental stimulation. “Recreation” is an hour in an outdoor cage like a kennel. Phone calls are prohibited. Meals arrive through a slot in the door. There is no access to educational or vocational programs or rehabilitative services.
As punishment for simple misbehavior, such as not promptly returning a food tray, people can be further deprived of basic necessities like nourishing food, showers or toilet paper.
About a third of the roughly 4,500 New York prisoners in extreme isolation are “double-celled" with another prisoner. Double-celled prisoner are locked up together — showering and defecating in front of each other —for weeks, months and even years on end. This practice commonly results in violence and often can be more psychologically debilitating than standard solitary.
Ceaseless isolation and deprivation causes grave psychological and emotional harm, including severe depression, rage and uncontrollable impulses.  Corrections staff receive few resources to safely manage individuals buckling under the stress of extreme isolation or its effects once they return to the general prison population.
Last year, the state doled out more than 13,500 extreme isolation sentences – about one for every four people incarcerated. Just over 8 percent of New York’s prison population is in isolation at any given time, the vast majority for non-violent offense, such as selling chewing tobacco, testing positive for marijuana, and yes, for having too many postage stamps, which are considered contraband.  Only 16 percent of isolation sentences from 2007 to 2011 were for assault or weapons.
What happens in our prisons can seem remote, but the use of extreme isolation affects all New Yorkers. Each year, 25,000 people are released from New York's prisons. Thousands will have spent time in extreme isolation.  About 2,000 people are released directly from isolation to the streets. They receive no transitional programming before their release to support a productive return to society.
Our report lays out sensible reforms that the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision could initiate immediately to make our prisons and communities safer. First, DOCCS should establish clear and objective standards to ensure prisoners are separated only when necessary, under the least restrictive conditions and for the shortest time possible. Then DOCCS should audit the current population in extreme isolation, identify people who do not belong there and return those prisoners to the general prison population.
These reforms would bring an end to a disastrous and unnecessary decades-long human rights crisis in our prisons, and put New York where it belongs: at the vanguard of smart and effective criminal justice reforms that both improve public safety and reaffirm our state’s commitment to human dignity.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/life-box-inhumane-and-unsafe-extreme-isolation-new-yorks-prisons

By Yaman Salahi, Arthur Liman fellow
This is the second in a two-part series of posts covering the impact of proposed changes to two major Los Angeles Police Department programs related to intelligence-gathering.
Do you know who your Facebook friends are?
Now that the Los Angeles Police Commission has approved new guidelines that allow LAPD to vastly expand its online spying operations, you should think twice.
Under the old guidelines, any kind of undercover work by LAPD intelligence officers was supervised by the Undercover Committee, a subcommittee of the civilian Police Commission. The Undercover Committee determines whether undercover investigations meet certain legal standards before they are opened.
But the new rules take online investigation using fake identities out from under the purview of that committee. Now the Committee’s approval will only be required if LAPD officers using a “fictitious online persona” engage in “ongoing interactive communications” with an “identified person or group.”
What exactly does that mean? It’s not clear. The term “ongoing interactive communications” isn’t defined anywhere in the new policy. It might mean that an undercover officer can “friend” you on Facebook and lurk in the background, watching what you and your friends post. It might also mean that undercover officers can “Like” pages belonging to groups like the Muslim Student Association and monitor the activity there. It could allow undercover officers to message you some number of times before it counts as “ongoing” communication — once? Five times? Ten? Twenty? The policy just isn’t clear.
Although it’s not clear what “ongoing interactive communication” is, we at least know what it isn’t, sort of. At the September 28 Commission hearing, Deputy Chief Michael Downing clarified that approval for online investigative activity would not be required if the officers were simply looking at “open source” information, like articles on the Internet. Chief Downing also cited access to chat rooms as one form of online undercover activity that would not require reasonable suspicion or supervisory approval.
But that’s precisely the kind of invasive and intrusive police activity that our society has consistently rejected. In 1975, the California Supreme Court heard White v. Davis, a case in which a UCLA professor alleged that LAPD sent undercover officers into university classrooms to take notes on what professors and students were saying. The Court commented that the “presence of secret police” in certain spaces would result in comments being “recorded by police officers, filtered through the minds of the listening informers, often incorrectly misstated to their superiors and sometimes maliciously distended.” The Court decried the chilling effect of widespread police surveillance: “Only a brave soul would dare to express anything other than orthodoxy under such circumstances.”
The kind of police spying challenged in White v. Davis is exactly what the old rules were meant to prevent. In the early 1980s, a scandal broke when it was revealed that LAPD had a secret squad dedicated to snooping — the creepily named Public Disorder Intelligence Division, or PDID. PDID’s job was to spy on politicians, celebrities, and judges, and it compiled millions of pages of information about lawful activities in its intelligence files. The suit that the ACLU filed against theBoard of Police Commissioners resulted in a settlement that called for rules limiting LAPD’s ability to spy on law-abiding citizens — the same rules that the Police Commission is now eroding.
What’s the difference between sending secret police into classrooms and sending them into the online spaces and social networks where so much public debate now takes place? Not much.  The threat to our freedom is just as great whether secret police infiltrate our lives on the Internet or otherwise. The new policies, however, treat the increasing use of these tools as an open invitation for more police surveillance of citizen activity, fundamentally changing the relationship between citizens and government.
Unless the Commissioners address these issues soon, be careful with your next Facebook status update. LAPD’s “fictitious online personas” might be reading, and they might get the wrong idea.
 

A bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown this weekend will help ensure that public school districts don't charge students illegal fees to participate in educational activities.
The American Civil Liberties Union of California and the law firm Morrison & Foerster announced Monday that in response to the new law they will dismiss their class action lawsuit, Doe vs. State of California, filed two years ago. The suit alleged that the imposition of such fees violated the California Constitution, which has provided for "free school" since 1879.
AB 1575, authored by Democratic state Assemblyman Ricardo Lara of Bell Gardens, requires the California Department of Education to provide guidance and updates on the "free schools guarantee" to superintendents and administrators every three years starting in 2014.
If districts charge illegal fees, the new law also provides for a modified uniform complaint process at schools so parents and students may resolve their concerns locally without costly litigation. Public school districts must establish this complaint process by March 1.
"This legislation provides a statewide mechanism to identify instances where students have been charged illegal fees and promptly puts an end to the practice," Dan Marmalefsky, a partner at Morrison & Foerster, said in a statement. The firm worked pro bono on the case.
"The state will now play an active role in stopping illegal fees, which is precisely what we sought to accomplish when we filed this lawsuit."
The lawsuit was based on an online investigation the ACLU conducted during August 2010. It found that at least 32 schools throughout California required students to pay for educational materials.
The suit alleges that requring students to pay discriminates against lower-income children and results in an unfair system that favors wealth.
"There are budget problems in the state and it's having problems ensuring schools get the money they need [but] you can't pass that cost along to school children and their families," said David Sapp, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Southern California. "In tough budget times, it's tough budget times for families as well," said Sapp.
In a March 2011 survey by UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access, 19 percent of California high school principals reported that their schools required students and families to pay for instructional materials in violation of the free school guarantee.
Lara introduced a similar bill in January 2011. It would have included a comparatively shorter response period during the complaint process and regular compliance audits. The bill passed in both houses but was vetoed by Brown last October; he said at the time that it "goes too far."
"Equal educational opportunity in free public schools is the bedrock of our democratic society, promising that every child will have a chance to achieve the American dream," Lara said in a statement released Monday. "AB 1575 ensures the 'free schools' guarantee is applied equally to all children in our state and remains a meaningful protection in our Constitution."
The bill was supported by organizations including the California State PTA, California Federation of Teachers, L.A. Unified, California Assn. of School Business Officials and California Assn. of Suburban School Districts.
By Tami Abdollah, KPCC
Tami Abdollah can be reached via email and on Twitter (@latams).