Day: May 31, 2011

Due to prison overcrowding in California a significant number of convicted criminals are being released.

So what exactly does this say?

Is this a condition where California has TOO DAMN MANY LAWS?

Or and this may be more likely,

Does California have TOO DAMN MANY CRIMINALS?

I’m blown away by the kind of thinking that says it fine to release known criminals back into society simply because they’re crowded.

Prison is supposed to be a deterrent. In general I agree with Sheriff Joe Arpaios of Arizona methods. His philosophy is in general pretty much like what I was raised with in the South. In the South they still use chain gangs for road cleanup and repair. YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE IN PRISON IN THE SOUTH!

I was taught that when you were convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison, all but your basic rights were suspended. So you were entitled to an appeal, you were entitled to food, and shelter. Anything beyond that was at the discretion of the Warden.

It astounds me that a California inmate costs the state on average $47000 a year. According to Legislative Analyst’s Office about 2/3 of the cost is administrative in nature (Security, health care, & operations) I think we AS TAXPAYERS are entitled to some kind of compensation. I think that all the inmates should be doing some kind of productive work. Instead of sitting around watching TV, working out, and getting degrees on the taxpayers dime.

Unfortunately, if California tried to use the prison population as a labor force offsetting the cost of incarceration, we’d spend more money fighting legal challenges than we’d save.

There is a subtext in all of this. It’s that there is in fact NO punishment or accountability. Why would the police spend any real effort to deal with petty theft when they know there’s no jail time even if they catch the perpetrator. The problem with this is, now the police are in a position where they’ll pick and choose which cases are more important.

So what’s the answer?

Deport Illegal aliens? Well that would work except that the hardened elements would be back in a week

Accelerate the execution of the prisoners on death row? Well, that would give us a few more cells to work with. It would certainly put the fear of California prison into potential criminals. But cleaning out death row isn’t a viable long term solution.

Eliminate the 3 strike Zero Tolerance laws? I think this actually would help. Zero Tolerance ANYTHING is stupid. When you have mandatory prison terms for certain offenses you automatically stress the prison system. Lets eliminate Zero Tolerance and get back to enforcing the spirit of the law not the letter.

Ship prisoners to out of state prisons? I don’t know if that’s a good idea or a bad one. Eventually, all the prison system will be overloaded, if it’s not already.

Whatever the solution, I don’t think dumping prisoners into society is the answer. Especially not with the state / local budget in crisis and police forces that are understaffed and overworked.

Lets face it most of the time the police arrive in time to clean up the blood, they rarely have an opportunity to actually prevent a crime. Dumping our prison population is far more likely to increase their janitorial duties.

As always, this blog is just my opinion and if you’ve got a different opinion you’re welcome to express it.