Tag Archives: Texas prison system

legal news

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.

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A/C for Texas prisons on the way?

Turn up the air conditioner, will ya, Bubba?

That might be the new normal within the gigantic Texas prison system, if a human rights organization has its way.

The state’s prison system doesn’t have air conditioning. The University of Texas Law School Human Rights Clinic recommends installing A/C units in all 109 prison units and demands that the temperatures do not exceed 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Report-recommends-A-C-for-Texas-prisoners-5419486.php?t=6b4c931e085eb86e8f

Or else … there might be a lawsuit in the offing.

Given the state’s history with observing prisoners’ rights — you’ll recall the infamous Ruiz lawsuit that federalized the state prison system for years because of overcrowding — I’m thinking the air conditioning units might be cost-effective in the long run.

The feds took over the state prison system in the 1980s, forcing the state to launch a huge prison-building campaign to relieve crowded conditions. Now we see this report suggesting strongly that the state needs to make life a tad more comfy for inmates.

I learned of the state’s non-air-conditioning prison system when I took a tour of the Clements Unit in Amarillo back in 1995. I didn’t think much of it at the time, given that the heat here — while it can exceed triple digits — isn’t as oppressive as it is in many regions downstate. The Stiles Unit in Beaumont comes to mind, where the humidity is as stifling as it gets.

Inmates have died in recent years of exposure to the heat. As the Houston Chronicle reported, “The clinic’s recommendation is expected to draw controversy in a state that has never been known for treating its prisoners too well and could fuel new lawsuits in addition to the six pending over eight heat-related deaths in Texas’ prisons — many of them in East Texas — in the past three years.”

I don’t believe in molly-coddling prisoners and, yes, it’s going to be a costly endeavor to install air conditioning in all the state’s prison units.

If lawsuits are waiting to be filed and if the state is going to lose to plaintiffs in court over this, then it seems to make sense to get ahead of the curve by installing the units and cool the places down just a bit.