Friday, July 5, 2013

Prison Reform Mini Rant


I stared this conversation on Face Book but quickly realized the issue was too large to clutter up my home page with. This will be brief but may expand as time goes on...

First off is this short article about the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is offering cash-strapped state governments to buy up their penitentiaries and manage convicted criminals at a cost-savings if they will sign a 20-year contract and assurances that the state will keep the prisons at least 90% full.!!! They sent these letters to all fifty states. Fortunately recently they lost the contracts in 4 states, Idaho, my state, included. So perhaps there is hope on this front... The Huffington Post has quite a few articles on this issue. CCA has been sued many times over abuses. Here in Boise they call it "Gladiator School"  because the guards allow inmates to batter each other with disregard as a control technique. Hmmm..

The next little thing is the issue of so many people being sent back to prison for minor parole violations. Things like changing jobs without permission. Or even having a girlfriend/boyfriend without your parole officers permission. This is totally ridiculous! In these times of financial stress on states why do they do this? Fine them instead. Make them do community service hours instead. But send them back to prison at an average cost in Idaho of $19,545 per inmate ... In California it is a whopping $47,102!! In Idaho the budget for the Idaho Department of Corrections is $143.2 million. The actual cost to do the prisons is actually $144.7 million. Do the math. Who suffers with this shortfall? Certainly not the state employees. It is the prisoners.

So one more issue that needs changed drastically. It is about what is called Street Time. if you are revoked, and you were on parole, mandatory supervision, or conditional pardon as described the parole board then you will not receive credit for the time from the date of release to the date of revocation (your street time.) This absolutely needs to stop. I knew people in prison who did well on parole for 3-5-7 plus years and made a mistake that violated them and they were sent back to prison to do their time losing all street time.. Last I heard I think there were 20 states that still take street time.. I will have to do further research on that. Here is some Street Time Conversation.

A Tidbit for thought and further conversation.. "Despite more relaxed attitudes among the public at large toward non-violent offenses like marijuana use, the number of people in federal prison for drug offenses spiked from 74,276 in 2000 to 97,472 in 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The punishment falls disproportionately on people of color. Blacks make up 50 percent of the state and local prisoners incarcerated for drug crimes."

So to close for now I just want to say that the issue of reform of our judicial system and prisons can't come soon enough. I hope this gets you thinking about it a little and you join in some way to campaigns to do this reform. Thanks for reading. Start the conversation.

In Brief Some Prison Reform Resourses