Thursday, January 31, 2013
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Wow!!! Freedom in question
All I can say is wow!!! This story is especially crazy to me for many reasons. I always hear "My future/My Life" (my nickname for my man) talk about how people do drugs in jail just like on the street but I didn't think it was this real. So basically women like Mone are taking chances with there own freedom as they try to assist there friends in making extra money while behind bars. It also hits close to home because Mone is the same age as me so I hope the best for her because we have so much life left. Also cause I have been on a couple of visits when people have been escorted out for allegedly passing drugs. Nothing ever materialized but I can just imagine the embarrassment and anger over interrupting the only time a week you can see and touch your loved one. Which leads me to think would you ever jeopardize your freedom for anyone??
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The Last 3 months
So the last three months have been rough to say the least. My boyfriend has been moved to a prison in upstate New York. Because he has such a short amount of time left I will try not to complain. I miss him like crazy!!! But luckily enough for me I have a family, business www.5149group.com, a full-time job and bi-weekly visits to get me through. I'm so proud of the progress we have made as a couple and as a business. 5149group is a business we started the first time he got in trouble in New York years ago. 5149group sells clothing, food, bath and body products to inmates in NYS prisons system. We have gone from a 3 page fold-out brochure to a 9 page catalog and we are still growing. He has less then a year a left and for that I am truly grateful. I hope to use this blog as journal/platform to help myself and other ladies get through their bids with the guys they love. Tell a friend and become a member yourself and lets trade resources. www.5149group.com
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Suspected rapist mocks Bronx DA's office
A man whose DNA linked him to three brutal sex attacks — but who will soon be released thanks to mistakes by the Bronx district attorney’s office — ridiculed prosecutors Sunday for the botched job.
“It’s a joke,” Brian Brockington said in a phone interview from Rikers Island. “If they had my DNA, how come I’m only in here on assault?”
Brockington, 35, was arrested on rape charges in 2007 and his cousin Rodney Howard, 36, was arrested two years later after their DNA matched evidence from a 1993 gun-point attack on a 29-year-old woman.
But because of a police backlog, the DNA evidence from the crime wasn’t processed for nearly a decade — and prosecutors filed charges a day after the crime’s 10-year statute of limitations expired, said Steven Reed, spokesman for the Bronx DA.
The DA’s office realized their error only after the cousins were arrested — and prosecutors were forced to drop the rape charges.
Two other cases against Brockington were also dismissed — one involving the rape of a drunken woman at a Soundview party in 2003 and sex-abuse charges stemming from a 1997 attack on a Bronx woman — because of “evidentiary issues,”including uncooperative witnesses who refused to testify, Reed said.
“We couldn’t make a case without them,” Reed said of the victims.
Brockington poked fun of Bronx prosecutors when told his DNA linked him to all three crimes - knowing he wasn’t going to be charged in any of them.
“How’d they mess up? That’s crazy,” he cackled.
He continually professed his innocence.
“I didn’t rape anyone,” he said smugly."I don't rape," he said. “They got me on assault. That’s it. Period.”
Brockington has been in jail for nearly five years after pleading down to attempted assault in the 2003 Soundview case. He is expected to be released soon with time served and will avoid having to register as a sex offender.
Charges were also dropped against Howard, who was freed last February.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/suspected-rapist-mocks-bronx-da-office-article-1.1025485#ixzz1n3IZU35b
“It’s a joke,” Brian Brockington said in a phone interview from Rikers Island. “If they had my DNA, how come I’m only in here on assault?”
Brockington, 35, was arrested on rape charges in 2007 and his cousin Rodney Howard, 36, was arrested two years later after their DNA matched evidence from a 1993 gun-point attack on a 29-year-old woman.
But because of a police backlog, the DNA evidence from the crime wasn’t processed for nearly a decade — and prosecutors filed charges a day after the crime’s 10-year statute of limitations expired, said Steven Reed, spokesman for the Bronx DA.
The DA’s office realized their error only after the cousins were arrested — and prosecutors were forced to drop the rape charges.
Two other cases against Brockington were also dismissed — one involving the rape of a drunken woman at a Soundview party in 2003 and sex-abuse charges stemming from a 1997 attack on a Bronx woman — because of “evidentiary issues,”including uncooperative witnesses who refused to testify, Reed said.
“We couldn’t make a case without them,” Reed said of the victims.
Brockington poked fun of Bronx prosecutors when told his DNA linked him to all three crimes - knowing he wasn’t going to be charged in any of them.
“How’d they mess up? That’s crazy,” he cackled.
He continually professed his innocence.
“I didn’t rape anyone,” he said smugly."I don't rape," he said. “They got me on assault. That’s it. Period.”
Brockington has been in jail for nearly five years after pleading down to attempted assault in the 2003 Soundview case. He is expected to be released soon with time served and will avoid having to register as a sex offender.
Charges were also dropped against Howard, who was freed last February.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/suspected-rapist-mocks-bronx-da-office-article-1.1025485#ixzz1n3IZU35b
Monday, February 20, 2012
From Beans to a Billion Behind Bars
Commentary by: Larry Benson
We always hear crazy stories about how people landed in prison. Take one New York resident, for example, who was imprisoned first at the age of 18 and sentenced for possession of stolen property. So what exactly did this young man steal? A truck full of canned beans off a street in Buffalo – yes…you read that right. (This is great – theft of a truckload of beans in Buffalo. Where the heck do you fence a truck load of beans? With that much gas, this kid could’ve become the next major domestic supplier.) So how did a bean thief find himself responsible for false tax refund claims of up to nearly $1 billion?
It’s like a “rags to riches” story – except substitute beans for rags and skip the happy ending. According to TPMMuckeracker.com, one New York inmate has discovered that it does not pay to file false tax refunds from prison. Here’s the basic story: in 2007, he filed a false tax return, claiming he had earned $500k during 2006 – except he was incarcerated at that time and couldn’t have been gainfully employed. (Oops.) The IRS then sent the inmate a refund check in the amount of $327,456 – c/o the Camp Gabriels Correction Facility in Upstate New York. (Apparently they were playing Jail House Rock that day!) Employees of the State Department of Corrections intercepted the mail, and reported the suspicious refund as fraud to the IRS, claiming him a “Frivolous Filer.” But the inmate wasn’t done yet. He went on to file 11 more false returns, even claiming refunds as high as $2 million. His fame spread through the jail, and he assisted other inmates with filing false refund claims. (That’s Professor to you!) It was even recorded that he assisted one fellow inmate in filing a tax refund claiming $60 million; he was paid in stamps and canned food for his services. (What an awesome ROI on that deal)
So how did a bean thief become a billion-dollar idea man? His attorney’s claim he borrowed the idea from an article on the website, “The America’s Bulletin,” a sovereign citizen website that offers “Prison Packets” – instructions for prisoners to free themselves from jail. (Obviously this packet is not working so well for our inmate.) His sentencing is scheduled for May, where he faces up to five years in prison and fines of up to $250k per each count.
Monday, November 14, 2011
After 25 years, freedom and nerves
And with the turn of a key, everything changed.
Stanley Butts walked out of Cayuga Correctional Facility April 11, a free man for the first time since his 1987 conviction on robbery charges in Cortland and Tompkins counties.
He carried $40 and his Social Security card in his pocket and a canvas bag of clothes over his shoulder. Another inmate had given him a pack of Marlboros before he left.
He was wearing his lucky yellow shirt.
Correctional officers processed him out and hustled him into a green prison van that went careening up Route 41A, through Skaneateles and down Route 690 to the bustling Syracuse bus station.
The van stopped, and when Butts stepped out it drove away.
No one was watching. That was it. Freedom.
“I’ve been doing this 25 years, one day at a time,” he said.“But right now it’s all in slow motion. It’s a whole new world.”
•••
A released inmate’s first responsibility upon release is to check in with his parole officer at a regional field office.
For those released from Auburn and Cayuga correctional facility, the nearest field office is in Syracuse. That means that many newly released inmates’ first day of freedom is spent studying bus schedules and finding their way in an unfamiliar place.
Butts, for instance, was released from CCF to Cortland, but he still had to go to Syracuse first.
The prison van dropped him off at the main bus terminal, leaving him to catch a city bus to the parole office 2.5 miles away.
After that appointment, he had to catch the same bus back to the terminal in time for a Greyhound bus down to Cortland.
There, he would sign up for social services benefits and, late in the afternoon, find out where he’d spend his first night outside a cell.
A spokeswoman with the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision defended the complicated travel arrangement, calling it “a policy question” and saying it was the parolee’s responsibility to get to appointments.
“Mr. Butts agreed to live in Cortland prior to being released, knowing he’d have to report to Syracuse (the first day),” the spokeswoman, Carole Weaver, said. “The choice was made by Mr. Butts.”
At the bus terminal, Butts turned right toward the Greyhound bus window, where he cashed in a voucher for a ticket to Cortland later in the day.
The woman behind the desk offered to hold his canvas bag while he was gone. He got a cup of coffee to make change and stared, perplexed, at the bills he got back.
“This looks like Monopoly money,” he said. “Are you sure this is real? What happened to good old-fashioned greenbacks?”
Back outside, a storm was ready to break from the overcast sky. City buses pulled in and out, in and out, the bus he needed not among them.
Butts paced and smoked, squinting to see the numbers on the buses as they came down the lane.
“My stomach’s doing flitter-flatters, man,” he said. “I don’t look out of place? I look like a regular Joe?”
Finally it came, 20 minutes late, and he boarded with a hesitant nod to the driver before settling into a seat toward the back.
The bus jerked into motion and the wind blew through a vent. Butts grinned.
“It seems like a bad dream,” he said. “I woke up after 25 years and I’m back in the real world.”
***
The key to a successful reintegration is a detailed plan of how to do it.
Jim Haid, executive director of Peace Prints Prison Ministries in Buffalo, said too many inmates leave prison without a firm idea of what they’ll do in the weeks and months ahead.
“Rather than just catching the Greyhound bus to wherever, it’s helpful to have a plan set in place, and a plan that’s going to support them in having some direction and finding the services they need,” he said. “Otherwise, they’re just going to fall back into the same old habits.”
The three most important aspects of such a plan are housing, work and support programs, he said.
Peace Prints, a non-profit organization that houses about 35 released prisoners in Erie County, provides those services and sends volunteers into Orleans Correctional Facility to help people before they hit the street.
What most guys need when they’re released is some solid footing,” Haid said. “The world is different from when they first went in, no matter how much time they spent.”
A failure -- or inability -- to handle that process sends thousands of men and women back to prison each year, often for avoidable parole violations.
Of the 24,921 people released from New York prisons between 2004 and 2007, nearly 40 percent found themselves back behind bars within three years, according to a study by the Pew Center on the States.
That is 22nd among the 41 states included in the study, and slightly lower than the national average of 43 percent.
About three fourths of those New Yorkers were recommitted for a parole violation rather than a new crime, the study showed.
***
Butts did not look like a regular Joe in downtown Syracuse.
He stepped carefully, eyeing traffic with suspicion and checking at every intersection to make sure he hadn’t lost his way to the parole office.
“There’s a lot of jaywalkers in this town,” he said.
He found the building and went inside for a 90-minute interview, his first contact with parole outside prison.
They filled out forms, photographed his tattoos and laid down the law: no leaving his residence between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. No drugs, no alcohol. No weapons, no hunting, no driving without permission.
Outside, there was music in Clinton Square and a group of children slapping a rubber street hockey ball back and forth across the blacktop.
Butts retraced his way to the bus terminal -- this time, more confidently -- and fetched his duffel bag from behind the counter.
He hadn’t eaten all day; the thought didn’t seem to cross his mind.
The bus to Cortland was about to depart. There, he was to check in with the Department of Social Services; his first regular parole meeting was scheduled for 8 a.m. the following Monday.
“I left all the animosity behind at Cayuga,” he said. “Now it’s stepping forward, getting my life back a little bit at a time. That’s all I can do.”
Staff writer Justin Murphy can be reached at 282-2237 orjustin.murphy@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter at CitizenMurphy.
Read more: http://auburnpub.com/news/local/article_7db6395e-0e75-11e1-8f79-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1dggOkiGt
Stanley Butts walked out of Cayuga Correctional Facility April 11, a free man for the first time since his 1987 conviction on robbery charges in Cortland and Tompkins counties.
He carried $40 and his Social Security card in his pocket and a canvas bag of clothes over his shoulder. Another inmate had given him a pack of Marlboros before he left.
He was wearing his lucky yellow shirt.
Correctional officers processed him out and hustled him into a green prison van that went careening up Route 41A, through Skaneateles and down Route 690 to the bustling Syracuse bus station.
The van stopped, and when Butts stepped out it drove away.
No one was watching. That was it. Freedom.
“I’ve been doing this 25 years, one day at a time,” he said.“But right now it’s all in slow motion. It’s a whole new world.”
•••
A released inmate’s first responsibility upon release is to check in with his parole officer at a regional field office.
For those released from Auburn and Cayuga correctional facility, the nearest field office is in Syracuse. That means that many newly released inmates’ first day of freedom is spent studying bus schedules and finding their way in an unfamiliar place.
Butts, for instance, was released from CCF to Cortland, but he still had to go to Syracuse first.
The prison van dropped him off at the main bus terminal, leaving him to catch a city bus to the parole office 2.5 miles away.
After that appointment, he had to catch the same bus back to the terminal in time for a Greyhound bus down to Cortland.
There, he would sign up for social services benefits and, late in the afternoon, find out where he’d spend his first night outside a cell.
A spokeswoman with the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision defended the complicated travel arrangement, calling it “a policy question” and saying it was the parolee’s responsibility to get to appointments.
“Mr. Butts agreed to live in Cortland prior to being released, knowing he’d have to report to Syracuse (the first day),” the spokeswoman, Carole Weaver, said. “The choice was made by Mr. Butts.”
At the bus terminal, Butts turned right toward the Greyhound bus window, where he cashed in a voucher for a ticket to Cortland later in the day.
The woman behind the desk offered to hold his canvas bag while he was gone. He got a cup of coffee to make change and stared, perplexed, at the bills he got back.
“This looks like Monopoly money,” he said. “Are you sure this is real? What happened to good old-fashioned greenbacks?”
Back outside, a storm was ready to break from the overcast sky. City buses pulled in and out, in and out, the bus he needed not among them.
Butts paced and smoked, squinting to see the numbers on the buses as they came down the lane.
“My stomach’s doing flitter-flatters, man,” he said. “I don’t look out of place? I look like a regular Joe?”
Finally it came, 20 minutes late, and he boarded with a hesitant nod to the driver before settling into a seat toward the back.
The bus jerked into motion and the wind blew through a vent. Butts grinned.
“It seems like a bad dream,” he said. “I woke up after 25 years and I’m back in the real world.”
***
The key to a successful reintegration is a detailed plan of how to do it.
Jim Haid, executive director of Peace Prints Prison Ministries in Buffalo, said too many inmates leave prison without a firm idea of what they’ll do in the weeks and months ahead.
“Rather than just catching the Greyhound bus to wherever, it’s helpful to have a plan set in place, and a plan that’s going to support them in having some direction and finding the services they need,” he said. “Otherwise, they’re just going to fall back into the same old habits.”
The three most important aspects of such a plan are housing, work and support programs, he said.
Peace Prints, a non-profit organization that houses about 35 released prisoners in Erie County, provides those services and sends volunteers into Orleans Correctional Facility to help people before they hit the street.
What most guys need when they’re released is some solid footing,” Haid said. “The world is different from when they first went in, no matter how much time they spent.”
A failure -- or inability -- to handle that process sends thousands of men and women back to prison each year, often for avoidable parole violations.
Of the 24,921 people released from New York prisons between 2004 and 2007, nearly 40 percent found themselves back behind bars within three years, according to a study by the Pew Center on the States.
That is 22nd among the 41 states included in the study, and slightly lower than the national average of 43 percent.
About three fourths of those New Yorkers were recommitted for a parole violation rather than a new crime, the study showed.
***
Butts did not look like a regular Joe in downtown Syracuse.
He stepped carefully, eyeing traffic with suspicion and checking at every intersection to make sure he hadn’t lost his way to the parole office.
“There’s a lot of jaywalkers in this town,” he said.
He found the building and went inside for a 90-minute interview, his first contact with parole outside prison.
They filled out forms, photographed his tattoos and laid down the law: no leaving his residence between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. No drugs, no alcohol. No weapons, no hunting, no driving without permission.
Outside, there was music in Clinton Square and a group of children slapping a rubber street hockey ball back and forth across the blacktop.
Butts retraced his way to the bus terminal -- this time, more confidently -- and fetched his duffel bag from behind the counter.
He hadn’t eaten all day; the thought didn’t seem to cross his mind.
The bus to Cortland was about to depart. There, he was to check in with the Department of Social Services; his first regular parole meeting was scheduled for 8 a.m. the following Monday.
“I left all the animosity behind at Cayuga,” he said. “Now it’s stepping forward, getting my life back a little bit at a time. That’s all I can do.”
Staff writer Justin Murphy can be reached at 282-2237 orjustin.murphy@lee.net. Follow him on Twitter at CitizenMurphy.
Read more: http://auburnpub.com/news/local/article_7db6395e-0e75-11e1-8f79-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1dggOkiGt
Monday, November 7, 2011
Elected officials found Rikers library for moms
State Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera (l.) and City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras show off books to be given to Rikers Island so incarcerated women can read to their children.
City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-East Elmhurst) and state Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera (D-Bronx) announced last week that they are collecting children’s books for female prisoners in Rikers Island and women’s facilities upstate to read to their children.
“We cannot wait until they are released to reintegrate them with their children,” Ferreras said.
The drive, which is still ongoing, was the brainchild of both lawmakers. Rivera said she and Ferreras were at a mutual friend’s house for a barbecue and began discussing the subject of mothers in prison.
Their talk lasted two hours, and by Oct. 26 they had hundreds of books to donate to Rikers as well as three women’s prisons upstate.
“We have women who are mothers who are not being given the additional support they need to be reunited with their child,” Rivera said.
Ferreras and Rivera visited Rikers after the announcement.
A fact sheet from the Correctional Association of New York, a Manhattan nonprofit with authority from the state Legislature to monitor prison conditions, said about 73 percent of New York’s incarcerated women are mothers, compared to 58 percent of men in prison who are fathers.
The association also said 83 percent of women were sent to prison in 2008 for non-violent offenses and 35 percent of women in prison read at an eighth-grade level or below.
“We just learned that Rikers does not have a library for these women,” Rivera said.
The assemblywoman said children’s books at the prison would encourage bonding activity and promote adult literacy.
“This is the one opportunity that a mother may have, even though she’s being detained, to be taken somewhere else,” Ferreras said.
In addition to the Correctional Association, Ferreras said she and Rivera have been working on this project with other nonprofits, such as the Osborne Association and the Jewish Board of Family & Children Services.
“Books are a powerful way to strengthen the parent-child relationship while nurturing a child’s love of learning,” Tanya Krupta, of the Osborne Association, said in a statement. “No matter what the literacy level or language of the mother, she can animate, narrate, cuddle and laugh with her child through a book.”
Rivera has also introduced legislation calling for female inmates to be placed in correctional facilities closest to their homes.
Ferreras said she is still collecting children’s books to be donated to Rikers Island. Books to be donated must be softcover for easier storage. They can be dropped off at the councilwoman’s district office at 32-33 Junction Blvd. in East Elmhurst.
TimesLedger Newspapers
“We cannot wait until they are released to reintegrate them with their children,” Ferreras said.
The drive, which is still ongoing, was the brainchild of both lawmakers. Rivera said she and Ferreras were at a mutual friend’s house for a barbecue and began discussing the subject of mothers in prison.
Their talk lasted two hours, and by Oct. 26 they had hundreds of books to donate to Rikers as well as three women’s prisons upstate.
“We have women who are mothers who are not being given the additional support they need to be reunited with their child,” Rivera said.
Ferreras and Rivera visited Rikers after the announcement.
A fact sheet from the Correctional Association of New York, a Manhattan nonprofit with authority from the state Legislature to monitor prison conditions, said about 73 percent of New York’s incarcerated women are mothers, compared to 58 percent of men in prison who are fathers.
The association also said 83 percent of women were sent to prison in 2008 for non-violent offenses and 35 percent of women in prison read at an eighth-grade level or below.
“We just learned that Rikers does not have a library for these women,” Rivera said.
The assemblywoman said children’s books at the prison would encourage bonding activity and promote adult literacy.
“This is the one opportunity that a mother may have, even though she’s being detained, to be taken somewhere else,” Ferreras said.
In addition to the Correctional Association, Ferreras said she and Rivera have been working on this project with other nonprofits, such as the Osborne Association and the Jewish Board of Family & Children Services.
“Books are a powerful way to strengthen the parent-child relationship while nurturing a child’s love of learning,” Tanya Krupta, of the Osborne Association, said in a statement. “No matter what the literacy level or language of the mother, she can animate, narrate, cuddle and laugh with her child through a book.”
Rivera has also introduced legislation calling for female inmates to be placed in correctional facilities closest to their homes.
Ferreras said she is still collecting children’s books to be donated to Rikers Island. Books to be donated must be softcover for easier storage. They can be dropped off at the councilwoman’s district office at 32-33 Junction Blvd. in East Elmhurst.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)