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Hank Haines: Editor makes amends for this teenage robbery


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Look, can we get this out of the way right here? When a teenager, Alex Friedmann pulled an armed robbery, got into a shoot out, was wounded, tried, convicted then spent 10 years in the pen. Unlike the rest of us, he made some mistakes when he was a teenager.

“I can’t provide any reasonable explanation. I was stupid. I was greedy. In addition, I was a terrible criminal and was caught right away.”

That was in ’87. “I was young, but there are a lot of young people out there who don’t get in trouble.”

He’s aware of maybe a debt he still owes. “I’ve tried to make amends. The experience led me to become interested in criminal justice issues,” he said from his Nashville office where he is associate editor of Prison Legal News (www.prisonlegalnews.org).

He’s also vice president of the non-profit Private Corrections Institute.

Friedmann, who spent the usual college years—18-26 – behind bars, is an articulate spokesman for prison reform.

“Look, we have 2.3 million locked up now and the number’s going up, and 95 percent of them will be released back into society. They’ll be given 50 bucks and shoved out the gate. They’ll go back, most of them, to their old neighborhoods that probably are crime infested. They’ll have trouble getting a job. Sixty percent of them will be back in prison sooner or later.”

“We’re not preparing prisoners to be released. Drugs are a problem, OK, but many crimes are the result of alcohol.”

Friedmann, a graduate of both types of prison, is solidly against privatization of prisons. “I have moral and philosophical objections to the privatization of prisons. Now, I want to be very careful not to imply that our public prisons are great. They aren’t.

“But the privately run prisons are operated for one reason: profits. That’s a poor excuse to be in the prison business.”

He points out that our “corrections system” fails to correct.

“And I have a big gripe that we think institutionalizing is the only punishment. Most of the nation’s prisoners are not murderers or bank robbers. They are into drugs, drinking, fights, stealing, fraud, and they can be punished by drug and alcohol courts, fines, community work service, weekend incarceration, electronic monitoring, counseling, treatment. All this is cheaper than prison and will increase the chances of bringing about corrections in behavior.”

Friedmann likes drug, alcohol and mental treatment courts. “Most of our citizens want less crime, less victimization. These measures will generate some correctional behavior.”

Friedmann drew regional attention in mid-August when he led a fight to derail a federal court nominee.
 
 
 
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By: LotusEater on 9/13/08
Alex Friedmann hasn't exactly "gone good," as you say in your story. The Tennessean reported that Friedmann had discovered some patient records from a clinic that had been improperly disposed of. The Nashville Scene exposed the fact that Alex Friedmann was actually culling through a Dumpster outside the clinic himself, hoping to connect Puryear to an abortion clinic. Puryear was one of the landlords for the building, but had no other connection to the clinic.

The building wasn't an abortion clinic. And the joke was on Friedmann, of course, because the clinic was actually the only Methadone clinic in Nashville. Who was a methadone clinic helping? Ex-cons and others who are addicted to heroin. What will be the effect of Friedmann's work? It won't hurt Puryear because his only connection is as a property owner, but it may close the only place these people can get treatment!

And there's a punchline. In spite of his being a self-styled watchdog, Friedmann was forced by a Nashville judge to give up the records.

So, before you lionize Friedmann, you may want to consider whether you or anyone you know may be seeking health care services in a building Puryear owns. At least you might want to call them and ask them to check to see if there is a pad lock on all the trash bins. Alex is probably searching through those Dumpsters right now looking for something that could hurt Puryear. I hope you don't get caught in the crossfire like those poor addicts.

Sources

The Tennessean

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080709/NEWS07/807090397

"Forty-three patient names and seven of their Social Security numbers can be found in the tossed records, which include notes from counseling sessions that contain details of patients' personal lives."

The Nashville Scene

http://www.nashvillescene.com/2008-07-31/news/getting-trashed/

"Bruised and battered, Puryear's confirmation stalled. So one Saturday last month, Friedmann went looking for the knockout punch....Puryear owned a Nashville building occupied by a clinic. Friedmann hoped the clinic's work was controversial (read: abortion)....'I don't care about methadone clinics,' says Friedmann. 'The only reason this came up is because this is part of the larger campaign against Gus Puryear.'"


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