Good for Gov. Mark Parkinson for requesting an outside review of Kansas’ prison system. Inmates and staff at the Topeka Correctional Facility claim that as many as one-third of the prison’s 250 employees have been involved with an illegal black market that includes exchanging drugs for sex with female inmates, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz disputes this, estimating that 2 percent of the department’s 3,000 employees statewide have engaged in such misconduct. Parkinson is acting responsibly in seeking an independent evaluation, which Werholtz also supports. As Parkinson said in a statement this week, “No one in our corrections system — whether it’s an employee or inmate — should ever be exploited or abused.”
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The figure of $28,000 per year for each inmate incarcerated in Kansas prisons and jails keeps running through my mind. I don’t have the number of current inmates but the total adds up to a giant bill for Kansas taxpayers.
Also county jails become overpopulated almost as soon as new jails are built. This is partially because several state prisons have been closed.
And the fact that a large percentage of inmates are incarcerated even though they pose no threat to safety of our citizens.
And, I’m told, for some reason the State of Kansas is the only state of 50 states that doesn’t receive federal funds for maintenance of the state’s penal institutions because of Kansas refusal or failure to meet federal guidlines.
Kansas would rather incarcerate law breakers than provide social counseling services and effective parole hearings/determinations.
Most likely low pay for prison guards is leading to the problems cited in some Topeka prisons.
Yes, Kansas needs a broad review of prison practices before our prisons break the back of our Kansas state government.
Prison industries – nuff said…
We need Joe
Sheriff Joe Arpaio (in Arizona) is doing it RIGHT!! He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them. He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails. Took away their weights. Cut off all but “G” movies. He started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects. Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn’t get sued for discrimination.
He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again but only let in the Disney channel and the weather channel. When asked why the weather channel he replied, so they will know how hot it’s gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs.
He cut off coffee since it has zero nutritional value. When the inmates complained, he told them…..this is a good one……”This isn’t the Ritz/Carlton. If you don’t like it, don’t come back.”
He bought Newt Gingrich’s lecture series on videotape that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place. You have to love this guy!!
More on the AZ Sheriff:
With temperatures being even hotter than usual in Phoenix (116 degrees just set a new record), the Associated Press reports:
About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to
their government-issued pink boxer shorts. On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 degrees inside the week before. Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels as sweat collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks. “It feels like we are in a furnace,” said James Zanzot, an inmate who has lived in the tents for 1 1/2 years. “It’s inhumane.”
Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago started making his prisoners wear pink, and eat bologna sandwiches, is
not one bit sympathetic He said Wednesday that he told all of the inmates: “It’s 120 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents too, and
they have to wear full battle gear, but they didn’t commit any crimes… so shut your damned mouths.”
We do not need Joe. Joe has almost the same recidivism rate as any other place. The theory that punishment over rehabilitation works is proven false.
I do not believe that a large portion of our corrections officers are involved in illegal activities with the inmates. In any prison. The study is just another cost that we don’t need right now. I appreciate that the governor wants to investigate, but we can’t afford to do so right now. I know for a fact that prison officials will take action on these reports. They take this seriously, and will hold thorough investigations. The other corrections officers will have big issues with one of their own behaving in a bad manner with inmates. They have to trust their partners, and know full well that they put themselves in more danger by playing with the inmates.
Look at the brain surgeon guard that was involved in the prison break in El Dorado a year or two back.
Law enforcement professionals need to be in prisons not glorified rent-a-cops.
“Mr_Kia” proclaims –
“Law enforcement professionals need to be in prisons not glorified rent-a-cops.”
You willing to pay for that?
“Law enforcement professionals need to be in prisons not glorified rent-a-cops.”
Never have I agreed with a statement more. Haw, haw, haw.
Monkeyhawk
Posted October 16, 2009 at 9:15 am | Permalink
“Mr_Kia” proclaims –
“Law enforcement professionals need to be in prisons not glorified rent-a-cops.”
You willing to pay for that?
—————————————————-
Sure. Find out who on welfare has a pack a day cigarette habit and fund it that way.
Uhm…, “Mr_Kia” –
Unless you happen to be “… on welfare has a pack a day cigarette habit and fund it…,” YOU aren’t willing to pay for it.
CONs are really eager to impose taxes they don’t have to pay. Hypocrites.
What’s wrong with a dollar-a-bullet ammunition tax? A thousand-dollar-a-month pick-up truck tax? I won’t have to pay it so it’s groovy. How ’bout a Bible Tax; every time you open it an chip implanted in the cover docks you $5 dollars?
“CONs are really eager to impose taxes they don’t have to pay. Hypocrites.”
As are liberals. President Obama “we won;t raise taxes on anybody making less than $250,000!!!
And the people said, amen. Hypocrites.
CONs are really eager to impose taxes they don’t have to pay
Please – conservatives have no monopoly on this type of hypocricy. The only thing nearly everyone agrees with is that the only “fair” tax is the one someone else pays.
That, of course, is how you end up with so many hidden taxes, taxes imposed on ‘the other guy’ but in fact passed on to you in the price of the good or service. And we are blindly and blissfully ignorant of those taxes we pay daily. That’s the real hypocricy – that “corporate” taxes, for example, are taxes on corporations. In fact, a corporation is a piece of paper, a legal fiction. People pay taxes, not pieces of paper. And those taxes are simply passed on.
The politicians know this, of course. But it’s politically expedient to posture that they’re taxing the “evil corporations” – knowing full well that those taxes will be passed on, and knowing full well the fools who buy their statements will be self-satisfied that someone else will pay the tax – even as the blissfully pay the tax.
Hypocrits all.
Everything else you mention MH is useful.
Cigarettes are not.
That’s why.
Blog to blog:
http://blogs.buffalonews.com/opinion/2009/10/new-york-vs-kansas.html
“Mr_Kia” declares –
Bullets, pick-ups, and Bibles are “useful.”
Not to me.
Tax ‘em.
Your choice.
Are cigarettes to anyone?
bygeorge
Posted October 16, 2009 at 11:41 am | Permalink
Blog to blog:
http://blogs.buffalonews.com/opinion/2009/10/new-york-vs-kansas.html
_____________________________
The George Pyle who wrote this article…Is he the same George Pyle who used to be the editor of the Salina Journal?
Yep, he’s THAT George Pyle.
Kia,
“Sure. Find out who on welfare has a pack a day cigarette habit and fund it that way.”
Uh, how much of that pack of cigs is already tax? You aren’t going to net much that way!