Placing Long-Term Convicted Felons In Jails Not Meant To House Them Causes Problems .....No Shit Sherlock
by Bob Walsh
The formerly great state of California began major efforts back in 2011 to reduce it's in-custody prison population. That was successful if your only measure for success is a reduction in prison population. It did, however, result in thousands and thousands of convicted felons serving relatively long terms being housed in jails not designed, equipped or staffed to deal with them. Among other things this has resulted in a 23% rise in suicides. In many of the jails have had a 300% increase in murders in the jails. One happened just two days ago in the Sacramento County Slammer at Rio Cosumnes. The state-wide average of homicide increases has been 46%.
Governor Newsom's brilliant plan to deal with this is to give the state more control over how the counties run their jails. They want to give the Board of State and Community Corrections, created in 2011, a great deal of authority over prison operations. Right now they make reports and make suggestions. The Gov wants to give this board actual legal authority to investigate in-custody deaths.
I am fully confident the elected Sheriffs will just LOVE to have a board of political hacks with personal agendas and no training or background running criminal investigations and telling them how to run their jails. Sounds like a sure winner to me.
1 comment:
I remember when the California Prison System was a model for others. As usual if something works well some politician will screw it up usually to steal funds for other stuff like a useless train.
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