If anyone can assist the individual below please contact him, us, or the inmate directly.
"In May 2009 my fiancee was granted parole from SCI-Muncy and the board of parole to go to renewal in Pittsburgh. On June 19 she was transferred to SCI-Cambridge Springs for holding until her June, 25 release date. On the 24th, one day before her release, they told her that would not be leaving tomorrow, claiming that she did not take a required class. So just like that a holding prison takes away her parole and release date.
Is it possible and or legitimate for Cambridge to go over the heads of Muncy and its parole board after all the effort put forth to parole her? I have never heard of this before in my whole life. They returned her to Muncy on July, 2. I wrote to several offices at the DOC in Camp Hill and some in Harrisburg but do not know if it did any good.
My fiancee maxes in April 2010. I guess we will never know why Cambridge Springs did this to her. I just send her some more money to Muncy because she has $200 in Cambridge Springs and $175 at the renewal in Pittsburgh. It would be nice if they would send her own money to her soon. She has to buy a new TV because they made her send hers home before going to renewal! Maybe you can check into this and let me know what happened.
Thank you for your time
John B. Dreher for Betzaida Mendez #OJ-9170"
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Thu, 10/01/2009 - 03:11
the Parole Improvement and Procedures Act of 1972, which has been cosponsored by three of my colleagues on my subcommittee. One of the chief lessons of our hearings, as it will be one of the
major themes, I would imagine, of your hearings, is that any essay into this area must be a very careful one. I say this because we have
faced a most perplexing problem. On the one hand, parole is clearly an integral component of the cor-
rections system. The authors of the Task Force Report on Corrections of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Adminis-
tration of Justice reported, in 1967, that "more than 60 percent of adult felons for the Nation as a whole — are released on parole prior
to the expiration of the maximum term of their sentences." Yet, on the other hand, there is the very real possibility that parole
is a barren concept, and no matter what we attempt in the way of 70-649improvement, we will really be doing no more than dressing up a sterile
creature in newer and nicer clothing, so to speak. I want to discuss this possible paradox a little more fully, because i believe it is crucial in the determination of what road is taken, both
by my subcommittee, and by yours in these very important hearings which you are beginning today.
A basic premise of parole is that there is an individual — the prisoner — who at some point becomes suitable for release from prison
by virtue of changes in his behavior patterns or beliefs or abilities. The second basic premise is that a certain body — the parole board —
can determine when the prisoner is ready ; that is, when this change in him has taken place. The prisoner is, in effect, a patient, and the
board is the doctor. 220-601 The doctor diagnoses the patient, pronounces him
either still ill or now cured and, dependent upon its diagnosis, keeps him institutionalized or sends him forth into the world. Were these premises founded in fact, or grounded on solid con-
firming data, we might well conclude that all the problems that now exist with parole derive from maladministration or some other merely
mechanical defect. Sadly, there are indeed few facts or data to sustain such a conclusion.
First, the assumption that prisons are institutions of positive change is very questionable, I don't have to recite the familiar indictments of
prisons, as they now exist, as counterproductive. But, I do think it worth very seriously questioning whether institutions of forced con-
finement, even structured and run in the optimally prescribed manner, 350-030 can ever be institutions of positive change. Granted, no such optimal
institution has ever been tried. But, nevertheless, we certainly must
consider whether coerced change can produce rehabilitation, or be equated with it. Human beings are complex creatures, and certainly
in our society, which ontinually invokes the tenets of individualism, the remaking of individuals, whether through forced confinement or
otherwise, is a most problematical venture.
Second, we must very seriously question the notion that parole boards can determine when a man is ready to be released. That
notion presupposes that board members have some special ability to
know what another human being — in this case, a prisoner — is really about, I am sure that you know, as do I, people who have spent years
lying on a psychiatrist's couch, at enormous expense, in the search for knowledge and understanding. Even after years, that search is not
completely successful.