Psychologists Explain High Recidivism Rate

Special guests for the "Human Rights for Prisoners March" Blogtalkradio shows next week will be Dr. Earle Williams and Dr. Jean Kennedy. Dr. Williams is a clinical psychologist with over 20 years of professional experience in Forensic Psychology. Dr. Williams is an educator and television commentator as well as a practicing psychologist. His responsibilities have included conducting psychological assessments to determine defendants' trial readiness. Dr. Williams is involved in helping released prisoners avoid recidivism.

Research by the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that 67.5 percent of released prisoners are rearrested within three years, almost exclusively for felonies or serious misdemeanors. All reentry programs should include counseling ex-offenders on how to avoid recidivism.

Sunday, May 18, 2014, 3pm EST - "Human Rights for Prisoners March" Blogtalkradio show on HUMAN RIGHTS DEMAND channel. Call-in (347) 857-3293. Listen live or to the archived tapes 24/7 at 
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/humanrightsdemand/2014/05/18/human-rights-for-prisoners-march

Monday, May 19, 2014, 12 midnight EST - "Human Rights for Prisoners March" Blogtalkradio show on NNIA1 channel. Call-in at (818)572-2947. Listen live or to the archived tapes 24/7 at
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/nnia1/2014/05/20/human-rights-for-prisoners-march

Dr. Williams wants to give back by helping released prisoners have a successful reentry. VIDEO http://youtu.be/gVVl3HtaL3A

Visit Dr. Williams' website at 
http://www.drearle.com/

Dr. Williams is committed to helping improve success and has made some of his publications available for free 
http://www.drearle.com/publications.html

Organizational psychologist and radio host Dr. Jean Kennedy will also be a guest on both shows. She is currently working with prisoner activist Mary Neal to publish a book to expose and oppose detrimental punishments in America: "Extreme Punishments - SHU and DP." Dr. Kennedy is prepared to explain the organization structure of America's justice system, which contributes to the nation's unacceptable high rate of recidivism.

Both psychologists have something in common with the ex-offenders they strive to help. Both have also been arrested.

Current National Statistics on Recidivism
Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) studies have found high rates of recidivism among released prisoners. One study tracked 272,111 prisoners in 15 states after their release from prison in 1994.[1] The researchers found that:
Within three years:
~67.5 percent were rearrested (almost exclusively for felonies or serious misdemeanors)
~46.9 percent were reconvicted
~25.4 percent were resentenced to prison for a new crime

The offenders accumulated 4.1 million arrest charges before their most recent imprisonment and another 744,000 charges within three years of release.

Released prisoners with the highest rearrest rates were robbers (70.2 percent), those in prison for possessing, using or selling illegal weapons (70.2 percent), burglars (74.0 percent), larcenists (74.6 percent), those in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4 percent), and motor vehicle thieves (78.8 percent).

Within three years, 2.5 percent of released rapists were arrested for another rape, and 1.2 percent of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for another homicide. See NIJ data at
http://www.nij.gov/topics/corrections/recidivism/Pages/welcome.aspx

Visit "Human Rights for Prisoners March" blog at 
http://humanrightsforprisonersmarch.blogspot.com
One reason for mass incarceration and recidivism is discussed in the article called "Pushing Young Blacks to the Drug Culture" featuring Ferrell Williams' hip hop song, "Young Niggas, Move That Dope."
http://humanrightsforprisonersmarch.blogspot.com/2014/05/pushing-black-youths-to-drug-culture.html

Attorney General Eric Holder recently announced an expansive clemency review under sentencing reforms that may result in thousands more inmates being released from prison. Successful reentry for released prisoners should therefore be a high priority. The attorney general said:

“Once these reforms go into effect, we expect to receive thousands of additional applications for clemency. And we at the Department of Justice will meet this need by assigning potentially dozens of lawyers—with backgrounds in both prosecution and defense—to review applications and provide the rigorous scrutiny that all clemency applications require.”

Please listen to and share our radio broadcasts on May 18 and 19. Many government officials and human rights activists are involved in justice reform. Most people agree that 2.3 million prisoners are too many. More must be done to reduce incarceration through education, skills training, decriminalizing mental illness and drug addiction, and launching successful reentry programs. Correctional facilities should emphasize rehabilitation, and corporations that use prison laborers should hire their released workers. Nonviolent offenders' records should be automatically expunged, and voting rights should be restored. Without a significant change in the rate of recidivism, prison releases under the Justice Department's sentencing reforms will not impact mass incarceration to the degree that could be realized.

Mary Neal, director
Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally Ill
http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/aimi

Dog Justice for Mentally Ill
http://DogJusticeforMentallyIll.blogspot.com

WrongfulDeathofLarryNeal
http://wrongfuldeathoflarryneal.com/main.html

Save Katherine Conner

(Updated at the bottom) Katherine Conner is a wrongly convicted woman who needs and deserves our support. Katherine was ordered to pay $388 per month for probation and restitution fees out of her low income, which is only $586 per month. Katherine was unable to care for herself and her household out of just $198 per month. Katherine paid $100 per month to the probation office, but she is now $3,000 behind. In March a judge ordered Katherine to pay the full amount that is past due by June 2013 or face imprisonment. We ask that 300 people give at least $10 to help Katherine Conner to raise her past due probation fees, or this innocent woman will be imprisoned in June 2013. Please contribute at this "GoFundMe" account http://www.gofundme.com/wxx2o  or mail her at P.O. Box 211, Wilson, LA 70789. Katherine will tell you about how the situation came about in the embedded below and at YouTube link http://youtu.be/6nFVLk4H3v4

Katherine was a working mother whose home was damaged by Katrina. She hired a contractor to repair her house in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, and that is where her trouble began. Katherine signed contract with Ralph Jefferson and agreed to pay $7,000 before repairs started on her house and $7,000 once Mr. Jefferson completed the job. Twice during the repairs, Katherine's contractor threatened to temporarily stop work on her house because he lacked the money to purchase materials and pay his workers. He requested and received advance payments on Katherine's final payment. Katherine advanced her contractor $3,500. When Katherine was presented with her final bill for the home repairs, she was addressing a problem on the phone and was distracted. She wrote the check for the entire amount on the contractor's invoice, plus $574. Katherine immediately realized her mistake. She called the contractor and asked for her check back and a corrected bill giving her credit for the advanced payments. The contractor refused. At that point, Katherine Conner did what any of us would have done. She cancelled the check, thinking that the contractor would return with a corrected bill when he saw that it was impossible to cash the check. Unfortunately, Katherine's credit union only cancelled the check to stop counter payments and did not also stop bank withdrawals. The contractor simply held the check for several weeks and then cashed it by electronic withdrawal. Please contribute at this "GoFundMe" account http://www.gofundme.com/wxx2o

Katherine's contractor therefore received payment on the $7,574 check that Katherine had already cancelled. Katherine complained to Pelican State Credit Union. The credit union acknowledged its error and and withdrew the money from the contractor's bank to repay Katherine. The contractor then filed a criminal complaint against Katherine and claimed she had done "theft of services." Katherine was arrested and prosecuted on what she feels should not have been a criminal justice matter, but a civil justice matter. All Katherine wanted was a corrected bill that credited her for the $3,500 advance payments she had made on her home repairs. Instead, Katherine was arrested for the first time in her 52 years, and she was faced with paying a bond and attorneys' fees in her defense.

At first, Katherine was convinced that once Prosecutor Samuel C. DaQuilla and Judge George H. Ware, Jr. saw her evidence and understood that she never wrote a check on insufficient funds, her trouble would be over. She hoped that they would not allow an unlicensed contractor from Mississippi to take unfair advantage of a Louisiana Katrina victim by demanding thousands more than the contracted sum for home repairs that were not actually finished. Katherine Conner was so disturbed about her arrest on criminal charges, in fact, that she filed a grievance against the officers of the court. Katherine certainly regrets complaining about the judge and district attorney now, because they refused to recuse themselves from her case. She was convicted and sentenced to pay 77% of her monthly income in probation fees. Since then, Katherine has been rejected by several employers due to her wrongful conviction on felony charges, and she got behind in her probation fees. She now faces prison, and taxpayers face paying incarceration costs for a crime that did not happen. Please contribute at this "GoFundMe" account http://www.gofundme.com/wxx2o

Katherine Conner appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Surprisingly, the higher court upheld the conviction but ruled that Katherine Conner's probation fees should be appropriate according to her income. The lower court, however, levied unreasonable probation and restitution fees. Katherine appealed to the public, hoping to find legal assistance. She published videos and petitions to protest her conviction and gave numerous radio interviews: "Say Your Piece - Selena McCall," "Dr. Shirley Moore," "Brian Coleman," "Bill Windsor," "Rev. Pinkney," "Women in Prison," and "Making a Difference."

*****

Katherine has searched and prayed for help. Please BE the change that she needs to see. We must operate in the third rule of Kwanzaa - Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems, and solve them together. Please contribute at this "GoFundMe" account http://www.gofundme.com/wxx2o

JOIN US at a Google+ Hangout to raise the past due probation fees for Katherine Conner and discuss the prison industrial complex on Saturday, April 13, at 6:00pm Eastern Time. Unless CoIntelPro interferes, the broadcast will also be archived at YouTube. Katherine only has a short time to raise the $3,000, which is an astronomical amount for the newly impoverished mother, but it is not much if we divide the cost - $10 each among 300 people who walk the talk against wrongful convictions and the mass incarceration of people, especially African Americans. Louisiana has the nation's highest incarceration rate in the USA, a nation with the world's largest number of prisoners in world history.

WE ARE GRATEFUL TO STARS WHO RECENTLY WROTE THE PRESIDENT

"Let’s Tackle Mass Incarceration and Drug Policy Reform Together"

http://legalpronews.findlaw.com/article/0fyM4tp2sxbbg?q=crime+OR+criminal+OR+arrested
NEW YORK – Tuesday, a coalition of over 175 artists, actors, athletes, elected officials and advocates, brought together by hip-hop pioneer Russell Simmons and Dr. Boyce Watkins, presented an open letter to President Obama, urging him to double down on his efforts to change the United States’ criminal justice policy from that of a punitive, suppression-based model to one that favors evidence-based prevention and rehabilitation.

Please contribute at this "GoFundMe" account http://www.gofundme.com/wxx2o
For everyone who prefers to mail Katherine Conner a contribution to pay her past due probation fees and help her avoid a Louisiana prison cell: P.O. Box 211, Wilson, LA 70789.

Please contribute at this "GoFundMe" account http://www.gofundme.com/wxx2o

God bless everyone who gives and everyone who desires to give but cannot. Hopefully, you will contribute before June 2013, if you cannot donate immediately and help to ease Katherine's mind. Thank you for sharing this fundraiser. We appreciate you for sharing Katherine Conner's problems. Please save her from wrongful incarceration. Pray for all Katrina victims and people caught in other disasters. It could have been you.

October 5, 2013 UPDATE: 
Katherine Conner received some donations toward her probation and borrowed the rest. Now she struggles to pay her monthly probation and restitution fees which amount that is 70% of her income PLUS repay her loan. Meanwhile, her district attorney continues his attacks on black people. District Attorney Sam D’Aquilla had Herman Wallace re-indicted for murder a few days after he was released from 41 years of solitary confinement in Angola Prison. Wallace, one of the Angola 3, probably died immediately upon hearing the news in hospice care that he was due in court in December 2013.

“I say he is a murderer, and he is not innocent,” District Attorney Sam D’Aquilla said. “The conviction was overturned because the federal judge perceived a flaw in the indictment — not his murder conviction.”

D’Aquilla said Wallace's attorney Nicholas J. Trenticosta, of New Orleans, was wrong when he said Tuesday that Wallace is “a free man, and he’s innocent.”

We often consider what our lives would be if only . . . But no matter how dissatisfied we may be, it could be worse. Regarding the physically or mentally handicapped, homeless people, the incarcerated or people facing imprisonment, think to yourself, "It could have been me." - Curtis Foster and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi
http://youtu.be/z6j4PDI6y6U

Mary Neal, human rights advocate against mass incarceration (Pv. 31:8-9)

Phone me at 678.531.0262