EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S ANNUAL MEETING REPORT

The Pennsylvania Prison Society continues to pursue its time-honored mission: promoting just, humane and restorative corrections. We are doing it with more professionalism, more strength, more commitment, more power, more influence. And we need every advantage we can muster because the challenges we face are not easily overcome.

We are still operating in an environment that is driven by an irrational fear of crime and that satisfies itself with simplistic and ineffective solutions. Over the last twenty years, we've spent the fortunes of generations on an obscenely expensive criminal justice system known more for its unfairness than its ability to constructively address the damages of criminality.

Consider the fact that Pennsylvania's prison population is still rising. We are building two new prisons at a time when crime rates have fallen for the last ten years and neighboring states (Ohio and New York) are closing prisons and seeing significant declines in incarceration. Why, we must ask?

Consider the fact that sixteen percent of the men and thirty percent of the women in Pennsylvania prisons are mentally ill. Prisons are in no way equipped to deal with mental health issues. What sense does it make to mix these unfortunate folks with violent and predatory offenders? Why, we must ask, again?

Consider the fact that sentencing policies strip discretion from the courts and result in absurd situations. Last month I heard the story of a young mother sent to state prison for two to four years for possession of the equivalent of three joints. This was her first offense and the judge was powerless to give her any other sentence. Who gains from this sentence? Are we safer? What happens to her children? We must, once again, ask why?

The answers to these questions and dozens of others that infect our criminal justice system have to do with politics, self-interest and mean-spiritedness. You, here, have your own litanies of horrors, I am sure. I mention these few only to describe the current environment in which we are working.

Within this context, the Prison Society has remained focused on keys to advancing our mission. These include:

• Advocacy for systemic reforms on behalf of voiceless individual inmates.
• Services that help prisoners and their families deal with incarceration.
• Collaborations with like-minded agencies aimed at strengthening the calls for reasonable and rational correctional policies.
• Networking with a variety of policymakers to keep our perspectives part of relevant dialogues.
• Educational initiatives to assist the public's understanding of prison and criminal justice operations.

Advocacy is at the heart of what we do. It is the work of our corps of official prison visitors. Since last year, our numbers continue to grow. We now have 377 visitors in 44 chapters. They advance our cause through daily interactions with prisoners and prison officials at state and county facilities. Just their presence serves as a message of hope for many inmates, and it also is a reminder for prison administrators that citizens still care about the well-being of prisoners.

On an individual basis, we have assisted inmates in securing transfers to prisons closer to their homes, helped others to work through the grievance process, and renewed contact visits with their children, to mention a few of the many types of advocacy activities.

On a broader scale, we have continued our struggle in the courts to overturn the 1997 Pardons Board referendum that has choked off commutations and promises to destroy the clemency process for the future. We remain active in the movement to end capital punishment. We recently were named to the advisory committee of the proposed legislative task force to study the aging, ill and life sentenced populations in our prisons.

The Prison Society also was successful in arranging an informational hearing with the House Subcommittee on Crime and Corrections for our Pennsylvania Equity Project. This initiative aims at getting sentencing reconsideration for lifers who were suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but were unable to use the ailment as part of their defense.

In the direct services arena, we are reaching out to more prisoners, ex-offenders and their families than ever before. In our Re-entry Services Program, we doubled the number of ex-offenders in the community-based program this year and added to it with a special initiative aimed at welfare recipients who have criminal records. We also began coordinating re-entry classes for the Department of Corrections at three state prisons.

Last fall, as the Services to Elder Prisoners contract was renewed, it was expanded to include prisoners 50-years-old and up which doubled the size of this program's caseload.

We have completed almost two years of parenting education classes at 16 state prisons. Some 1,300 inmates have participated so far. The parenting classes are part of a group of family oriented programs we provide. This time last year we launched a virtual visitation program that enabled families in the Philadelphia area to visit by means of a teleconference with prisoners at four state facilities. Almost 500 people have taken advantage of these hour-long visits to date. In the coming months we will be adding four more prisons - Muncy, Green, Albion and Dallas.

We also began a subsidized busing program to take family members from the Philadelphia area to each of the state prisons, except the two closest to here. We have been able to transport more than 1,400 people so far.

Lastly, our restorative justice program has developed better than any of us could have expected. We are especially delighted with the RJ effort because it provides the cross between service and advocacy. We truly believe what we are doing is unique and cutting edge. I say that because we are doing restorative justice from the prisoners' perspectives, and we know of no one else doing that sort of thing.

We are proud of all our programs. We feel they all contribute to the overall improvement of the life situations confronting the populations we serve. And, they are successful, I believe, because our staff makes it happen with their dedication and professionalism. We have our ups and downs at the Prison Society. But on balance, there is a positive, can-do attitude - a spirit that recognizes the difficulty of the work we do and the necessity that we endure.

I believe this attitude serves us well in the collaborations and networking that I spoke of earlier and will bolster our efforts to reach the public. We hope to fashion an aggressive public education campaign.

The voting public needs to know that we are using prisons to solve too many social, economic and political problems. They need to know that prisons cannot cure mental illness, drug abuse, gratuitous violence, ignorance and abject poverty.

We in the Pennsylvania Prison Society, followers of the people who developed the penitentiary concept, must be the voice to carry that message forward. With your help and continued support, we intend to do just that.