Thursday, February 16, 2012

ONLY IN KOOKFORNIA: PRISON INMATES WILL BEHAVE LIKE MODEL CITIZENS IF YOU JUST GIVE THEM MUSIC, VIDEO GAMES AND CABLE TV

Here are some comments from PACOVILLA Corrections blog:

Gadfly says: Gee, teaching bad guys to be good with XBox…. what a concept. How about a rousing game of Call of Duty where violent inmates can practice shooting via video games? The prison yard is not a playground, Mr. Cate!

DVI 1975 says: This guy [prisons chief Matt Cate] is such a fool. Why even send them to prisons Cate? Why don’t we just let them stay home and promise to be good? You sir have lost your way and your mind. I have an even better idea - why don’t we bring in top chefs to prepare meals for them too or how about we give these guys contact visits in their cells? Cate, you are an inmate lovin fool!

Paco says: Our correctional officers will be safer once the SecrAttorney [Cate] and his demented boss [Governor Moonbeam] leave town. The sooner the better!

And my thoughts are: Another kooky idea from the State of Kookfornia, but this one just about beats them all. Cate says that drugs in prison are a ‘huge problem.’ I’m sure they are. But the biggest prison problem of them all is Cate himself.

CALIFORNIA PRISONS CHIEF WANTS MUSIC, VIDEO GAMES AND CABLE TV FOR INMATES
By Marisa Lagos and Wyatt Buchanan

San Francisco Chronicle
February 11, 2012

If California's prisons chief had his way, well-behaved inmates would have access to music, video games and cable television.

Corrections Secretary Matt Cate told a group of journalists this week in New York City, where he was speaking on a panel at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, that state prisons have become so punitive there is "very little benefit in obeying the rules."

"If you take everything away from a person, you also take away their ability to influence their behavior," he said. "I think, ultimately, I'd like to get to a place where 95 percent of our prisons are places where inmates have everything from MP3 players to Xbox to cable TV, I don't care, they can have (all the) goodies you can possibly get, great, as long as they follow the rules ... and our guards are safe."

Cate, who has been tasked with implementing a court-ordered, 33,000-inmate reduction in the state's prison population, said overcrowding has made it particularly difficult to work with inmates.

He said the way to loosen the grip gangs have on the inside is to cut drug use, perhaps through more drug testing. "You have got to get ahold of the drug problem... I think the gangs get a lot of power and money and influence from selling drugs in prison. It's a huge problem," Cate said.

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