ctv_will: Welcome to Court TV Online chats.
Today we're continuing a week's worth of women in prison chats.
We've talked to prisoners and activists and politicians, and today we're talking to someone who is focused on another aspect of this topic.
Julie Stewart is the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
Their focus is on new drug laws that put non violent drug offenders in prison for a long time.
Of particular concern is women with children who get arrested for a drug offense, and then get thrown in jail for 15 years, leaving their families in the lurch.
we hear a lot about the need to be "tough on crime"
and that's probably a good idea when it comes to depraved killers, but what about nonviolent drug offenders?
Has the war on drugs done more harm than good?
There are 2 million people incarcerated in the US (the land of the free)
most of them are there, not because they're evil killers, but because they're druggies.
But does that mean we should legalize drugs???
Does that mean that if a woman is arrested and she's a mother, should she be given a lighter sentence so she can keep herfamily together??

Something that came out in last night's chat that I thought was interesting is that all of the people who are serving mandatory drug sentences right now will all get out at the same time.
Does it make you think we might want to try to help the inmates before we release them?
Would it surprise you to know that that's not happening?
Those million or more people who in serving time in prison, learning to be worse criminals are going to be out of prison and back in society. does thatworry any of you?
Another interesting point I've heard made this week is who would you rather have living next door to you-- someone who was arrested for drugs and went through treatment and job training and counselling? or someone who was arrested for drugs adn served 15 years in prison with no rehab?
But then, there are always people who make the point (not yet on the question list though) that prisoners aren't in prison to be treated nicely.
They're in there to be punished, and they dont' deserve free schooling, and free services.

Welcome Julie Stewart!
Julie Stewart: Thank you.

lonely106 asks: Whar are most meman in prison for
Mal81 asks: Why is da # of women increasing in prison
Julie Stewart: There is a recent study by the general accounting office and the numbers show that 72% of federal prisoners and 35% of state prisoners were in for drug offenses in 1997.
And they showed that there was a 500% increase over the past two decades - due largely to the passage of new drug laws.

geehart99 asks: what % of women in prison recv'd treatment?
Julie Stewart: That's never very well known, but in the federal system, you are only eligeable for treatment when you have only 2 years left on your sentence.
But I did just hear at a hearing last week that everyone in the federal system has access to drug treatment.
But there's not always space available for them at the time that they want to take it.
Also this report showed that while most women were in prison for drug offenses, including use, drug treatment in prison was actually on the decline

mallards23 asks: United states should legalize drugs.
Julie Stewart: That would drop the prison population, yes, but that's not our issue.
We're concerned about sentencing because there is actually a chance to improve sentencing today and affect peoples lives today.
We want to make sentencing more sane so that people's lives aren't thrown away.

JANISJOPLIN298 asks: What do you think of private run prisons?
Julie Stewart: I think they create the wrong inscentive.
It's like "build it and they will come" and in fact, they're finding plenty of ways to fill the prisons that are being built.
I'd rather see communities building Kmarts or something besides making money of other people's misery.
Plus, prisons don't produce a product that contributes to the general well-being of the community.
And I'm a big fan of limited government but the idea of privatizing prison goes further than I think most libertarians would go because, as I said, it's making a profit off someone else's misfortune.
And it does probably encourage continuing restrictive sentencing policies because people will have a vested interest in seeing prisons succeed.

carlson_400 asks: what is the basis for discussion?
ctv_will: Why is this subject coming up now?
Julie Stewart: It's been up for a long time.
I've been doing this for 10 years.
I think that what's happened is that more and more average citizens are being affected and becomming aware of a problem they didn't know existed.
So it's been up for a while now, but it's coming up to more and more people now.
And because the numbers are so big, with 2 million people incarcerated.
That's a record that we shouldn't be proud of, and it's attracted a lot of attention, both here and abroad.

kathiesmith30110 asks: Did you know that there is a recidivism rate of 97% if an inmate is not educated while incarcerated. But only a 10% recid. if they are?
Julie Stewart: I've not heard those numbers, and stats are notoroiusly easy to twist, but I agree with you that education and treatment reduce the recidivism rate.
I don't know if it's as dramatic as you're saying there, but it is significant.
And unfortunately, those are the programs first to get cut when they try to save money.
Even in the federal system --the pell grants that used to allow inmates to take college courses have been eliminated for prisoners, so inmates no longer qualify for the grants.

Green_eyed_Angel17 asks: Do you think because you are female you should get better treatment then men in prison?
Julie Stewart: I think we're focusing on women, partly because it's mothers day, partly because women are going to prison at a faster rate than men- even though there are more men in prison.
And also because many of these mothers --84% of federal prisoners and 64% of state prisoners are mothers-
most incarcerated great distances from their children.
This is a concern because it definitely influences the self confidence and self image of the child and has been shown to increase the liklihood they will end up in the criminal justice system in the end.
Mothers play a special role in the life of a child, and when you take them away for as ridiculously long as sentences are today, you increase the liklihood that we're going to have another generation of prisoners.
Again, all defendants should be looked at individually.
A judge should be able to consider if a woman's children will be put in foster care if she goes to prison.
The current mandatory minimum sentencing laws do not allow for that kind of discretion.

ctv_will: Does that bother judges?
Julie Stewart: Yes. We often receive letters from prisoners and judges say on the bench at sentencing that they would not give the sentence if it was within their power.
That was challenged in the Supreme Court in 1989 in Mistretta v. US, it was a question of basically separation of powers.
Could Congress determine sentencing, and the court decided that yes, Congress does have that power.

ktrob100 asks: DO you feel mandatory sentences for anything is good Julie?
Julie Stewart: No.
For the same reason we oppose them for drug offenses, we oppose them for all offenses.
Each case is different, each defendant is different, and the judge has to be able to determine a sentence on the case.
The idea of a sentence being determined by a legislative body is absurd. they've never seen the defendant, they know the least about the case, they should not be the ones to make the final sentence.
I know if I were a defendant in front of a judge, I'd want him to be the one to decide my fate, not semone who's never laid eyes on me.

blc_1955 asks: What is the average length of sentence for woman compared to men for similar crimes?
Julie Stewart: Average sentence in the federal system for drugs is 76 months 6 1/2 years.
The average federal sentence for sexual abuse is 71 months
and manslaughter is 45 months.
So sex offenders spend less time in prison that drug offenders.
And interestingly, the average sentence for drug defendants in 1985 was 23 months, so it more than tripled in 15 years.

MAIDENBARREDA asks: what are the sentences normally.....what happens to the children of these drug addicts
Julie Stewart: We hear from women in prison all the time who talk abotu their children being sent to foster care.
It depends on the state, but many states have a time limit- once the children have been sent away, the parents have a certain amount of time to claim them, and if they don't get out of prison in time, the children are put up for adoption.
Other children go and live with grandparents or with some other family relative.
And it's very hard to explain to a child why their parent is in prison. Children love their parents no matter what, and it is very hard to explain why mommy is in prison but mommy is not a bad person.
Children of prisoners are forced to handle emotional and pyschological issues before they're ready.

Elainie_L asks: The "War On Drugs" has to end. Besides being a complete failure, it was wrong in the first place.
Julie Stewart: Well, the war on drugs is certainly responsible for the enormous build up of the prison population and it is an enormous expense to tax payers annually.
Our focus is not on the war on drugs at large, but specificially the way the drug sentencing is played out on the American populace.

ctv_will: Let's talk about that. How do you think drug offenders should be sentenced?
Julie Stewart: I think drug offenders and all other offenders should be sentenced according to their role in the offense.
It's not different from how most people think it should work.
You can like or dislike the drug laws, but they exist, but the punishment should be appropriate to the level of involvement of the defendant.
Today we give sentences to drug offenders that in the past would have gone to murderers, which really skews the whole system.
If a non-violent drug offender can get 25 years, what should a murderer get?

ctv_will: So what SHOULD a drug offender get?
Julie Stewart: A case that we have folloowed from the beginning of FAMM is of a young womean named nicole Richardson who was 18 and in love with a boyfriend who was a small time drug dealer.
Someone he sold drugs to got busted and agreed to set him up.
The cops called the girlfriend pretending to want to buy drugs she gave them the phone number of her boyfriend and that was enough to get conspiracy to distribute.
She lost her case and got 10 years in prison.
Her boyfriend copped a plea and only got 5 years in prison.
Nicole's story is all too common.
The girlfriends and wives of the drug dealers are often not the active drug dealers, but it doesn't matter because everyone gets the same sentence-- unless you're the kingpin and you can bargain with prosecutors, and then you can get less time
Which is ironic because that's the point of these laws in the first place.

MAIDENBARREDA asks: why couldnt they have maditory drug testing and treatment on the outside so their families could get involved.....not always the best thing to do...lock these women up
Julie Stewart: We strongly support alternative sentencing, particularly for the primarly care giver.
We wish the courts were allowed to give that sentence, ankle bracelet, drug treatment, counselling.
So the mother could be working and keep her family together.
Instead, we pay to keep the mother locked up, and we often pay for her children to eat with food stamps.
And that goes for men too, often men are the bread winners for a family, so you take them away and then the family needs assisstance. And on top of that, the state has to pay to warehouse the father.
My own brother got 5 years in prison for growing marijuana.
He needed treatment, and counselling and other things, but 5 years in prison is not what he needed and not what the judge wanted to give him.
There is a popular alternative called "drug courts."
In general we support the idea, it's where your case gets handled in a separate court where you are monitored and if you stay clean, your sentence is dropped, but if you mess up you have to serve your sentence.
But not all drug courts are equally successful, but the principle of drug courts is good.

CAT112965_98 asks: HAS THE FEMALE POPULATION INCREASED IN PRISON AS IT HAS IN JUVENILE DETENTIONS?
Julie Stewart: The juvenile justice system is burgeoning.
Whether or not it's connect to the adult population I don't know, and it will be very interesting to know how many juveniles have an adult in prison.
A study in California showed 51% of juvenile offender girls had an adult in prison.
I think mandatory minimums are already coming back to bite us.
Mandatory minimums have been here since 1987, so some people sentenced under them them have already gotten out.
We just have an ongoing population re-emerging into a world that is much changed.
So I think that we do have ----90% who go in, do come out again, so as a society we have to prepare for those people who aren't used to being on the outside.
Some don't know how to cope in this world.
There are enormous forseeable problems with this population that will eventually return to society.
Even in my brother's case, he was in a small prison that happened to be co-ed, so his was a relatively "normal" prison experience, but for at least a year an a half after he got out, when he heard a bell, he would flinch and think that it was time for a head count.
He felt like he was constantly being watched- a common condition in people who've served time in prison.
He was amazed when I took him to a shoe store with shoes on the shelves because when he went in there wasn't such a thing, you had to ask the clerk to see what you wanted.
So I think that we'll be seeing extra strife in whatever form it will take as prisoners return to society.

look_at_this_baby2000 asks: Incarceration is big business. Wardens like relatively easy prisoners like women and pot-smokers. Politicians exploit the situation. What can be done?
Julie Stewart: Interestingly, wardens and corrections staff are probably the people I would trust most to ask who should not be in prison.
Because they do see thousands of people who do not need to be there.
They've been quite vocal about expressing their concern for really crowded prisons with people who don't need to be there.
And I wish Congress would listen to them.
If we keep up at the rate we're going, we'll spend all of our resources on prison.
There are bills in Congress to repeal mandatory minimums.
Maxine Waters has a repeal bill.
More people have to express their concern about prisoners who are costing us as tax payers and we're getting nothing in return.
And there is a tiny but growing concern that something should be done and we really just need to add voices to that cry or nothing will be done.

ctv_will: Thank you very much Ms. Stewart, I appreciate you taking this time with us.
Julie Stewart: Thank you.

ctv_will: We have to wrap it up because we're getting close to the top of the hour.
It's funny that Ms. Stewart mentioned legislators at the end there because our next chat guest-- the last one in this series-- is a New YorkState Assemblyman.
He is trying to amend the law in New York State to prevent women from being handcuffed and shackled when they are giving birth in prison.
That might sound obvious to you, but believe it or not, in the US, pregnant inmates are frequently forced to go through labor with their arms and/or legs in irons.
I guess it seems as much common sense as not giving the girlfriend of the drug dealer and harsher sentence than the drug dealer himself, but these are the kinds of things that are happening in the US justice system today.

Ok, so that next chat is at 5pET/2pPT, that's only an hour from now.
I'm going to go walk around the office a couple times and then I'll be back.
For those of you interested in women in prison issues, we have a whole lot on the subject on the Court TV web site at www.courttv.com
And if you enjoy talking about crime and justice issues, check out our Yahoo club at clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/theofficialcourttvclub
Thanks again to all who came out with questions today.
oh, by the way, the web site for Families Against Mandatory Minimums, of which our guest it the president is www.famm.org
Until next time, fear simple answers.
This chat has ended, you may go in peace. :)