Tag Archives: Neal Unit

Prison is far from ‘normal’

“We have a tendency … to think it’s normal that so many of our young people end up in our criminal justice system. It’s not normal. It’s not what happens in other counties. What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things. What’s normal is young people making mistakes.”

— President Obama

Doesn’t it strike you as odd that of all the men who’ve served as president of the United States, that it took the current individual — Barack Obama — to become the first one to visit a federal penitentiary?

I find it odd. It’s a long overdue examination by the head of state and government of a key component of the federal judiciary system.

President Obama went to the federal lockup in El Reno, Okla., and told corrections something they no doubt knew but rarely spoke about out loud, in public. It was that many of the non-violent criminals are no different from other young offenders who’ve made mistakes.

Lord knows I made my share when I was much younger and much less aware of the consequences one faces for making mistakes.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/president-obama-meets-non-violent-inmates-oklahoma?cid=sm_fb_msnbc

Obama talked about the explosion in the prison population. It happened in Texas, to be sure, partly because a federal judge — William Wayne Justice — ruled that overcrowding in the Texas prison system created an unconstitutional form of punishment for inmates. He ordered the state to fix the problem, so the state went on a prison-building binge — including the two units in Amarillo — to help relieve the crowding issue.

Federal drug laws became the focus of Obama’s visit to the El Reno lockup. The sentencing guidelines put non-violent offenders into prison, often serving life sentences. He recently commuted the sentences of 46 non-violent offenders and went to Oklahoma to talk up the need to rethink these sentencing guidelines.

That it took so long, though, for a sitting president to step inside one of these prisons is mind-boggling in the extreme.

Is it “normal” for teenagers who make mistakes to pay for them by spending the rest of their life behind bars?

The president said “no.”

I happen to agree with him.

Texas exhibits a progressive streak

Texas has been singled out for something other than its loudmouth politicians, its barbecue and the tendency among some of us to brag with a just a bit too much gusto.

Seems that Texas is a leader in something quite unexpected: incarceration reform and the state’s crime rate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/best-state-in-america-texas-where-both-crime-and-incarceration-rates-are-falling/2014/12/05/e0a0f4a8-7b07-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html

Incarceration rates are declining in Texas. The result has been — are you ready for this? — a reduction in crime, according to a Washington Post writer.

According to blogger Reid Wilson: “In the 1990s and 2000s, states pursued the expensive goal of being tough on crime. Now, with budgets strained near breaking points, those states are trying to cut costs by being smart on crime. Reducing crime rates, recidivism and prison populations isn’t just good for society, after all, it’s good for a state’s bottom line.

“And despite Texas’s reputation as the home of draconian crime policies, no other state has adopted more alternatives to traditional incarceration — or reduced by as many the number of prisoners it must pay to house.”

Indeed, the prison-building boom began during the administration of the late Gov. Ann Richards, thought by conservatives to be a squishy soft-on-crime liberal Democrat. Amarillo got two prison units out of it: a maximum-security lockup named after another former governor, William P. Clements, and a medium-security unit named after local educator Nathaniel Neal.

Two legislators, Democratic state Sen. John Whitmire and Republican state Rep. Jerry Madden, introduced a program that provided treatment for criminals rather than a prison bed.

The state’s prison population has decreased by about 5,000 individuals since 2010, according to Wilson’s piece. “The state still executes more people than any other — 10 so far this year — but crime rates have fallen markedly. Recidivism is down from 28 percent to 22.6 percent,” Wilson writes.

This is an interesting development for a state known as a kill ’em quickly kind of place.

I guess it goes to show that a little progressive thought can go a long way.