Briefs

• The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA)/AFSCME Local 11 didn't sit idly when the state’s Department of Rehabilitation and Correction tried to curb cigarette smoking for inmates. At the Oakwood Correctional Facility in Lima, which works with mentally ill inmates, patients denied access to smoking could turn violent, states William McDonnell, president of OCSEA Chapter 0220.
  
  The chapter, which has been working with the mentally ill for years at Oakwood, gathered the support of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) to put an end to the smoking ban. NAMI stated, “We recognize the need that many consumers have to smoke. Most consumers use cigarettes as a calming agent or to ease the side effects of medication. ... To expect someone who is psychotic to give up smoking suddenly is cruel.”

• The Florida Commission on Ethics has accepted a record $20,000 settlement paid by Dr. Charles Thomas, a University of Florida professor of criminology, for conflict-of-interest violations. Ken Kopczynski, research assistant for the Florida Police Benevolent Association, exposed Thomas — who was lauded as the guru of prison privatization — for his consultant role with the state of Florida while maintaining a personal financial interest in the privatization industry. The university relieved Thomas of his Private Corrections Project Directorship and he no longer does research on prison privatization. He also resigned from the university.

• Barbara Bush was the keynote speaker at the American Correctional Association’s (ACA) winter conference in Arizona. Wayne Calabrese, president and chief operating officer of Wackenhut Corrections, personally invited Bush to speak at the event. She took the opportunity to inform the audience that a Bush governs one out of eight Americans. The ACA is the trade association for corrections’ management. The conference is a big money-making event for vendors with prison industry products and services for sale. Texas has the most privately policed prisons of any state in the country.