Re: Curious to hear comments regarding an armed robbery by a 19 yr old kid.
Wait wait wait......
I think calling the Penal system broke is incorrect, it was never designed to reform, you can go back to the beginning and time after time you can see the changes as man (it doesn't matter what country) has tried to modify the system to include some fashion of reform or criminal recovery, anything to get criminals to change their ways and become productive citizens on the outside and it has had limited success, you can add to the situation that our Sheriff is in charge of our Jails, he is up for election every 4 years, and if things like a criminal on parole committing a serious crime happen the Sheriff is likely to pay for it with his job! Term Limits in place here in Colorado also are a real issue, elected officials can only serve two terms, so policy changes in the jail are only worth a few years, we have tried to get term limits removed for the Sheriff twice and so far been unsuccessful, but I think it is gaining traction.
You can look at one person who does not have term limits, and has had a decent success at reducing recidivism, he may make your skin crawl with his politics but he has made a lot of us think about how we do things, Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County Arizona, but his radical changes are not something our Sheriff is comfortable doing knowing that he has an 8 year commitment TOTAL, and its tough to fault him for that. Our Sheriff is termed out next year and right now things are pretty much at a stand still policy wise since next year(2015) we get a new Sheriff, our Sheriff is a good one and he will be missed when he moves on.
What Bubba is trying to say is there has to be a better way, and this discussion is about what is that better way?
I think that reducing recidivism in our criminal system has to include some form of criminal record reduction, which it does to an extent but the reality is that any felon is going to have a difficult time getting a job with a felony on his record, misdemeanors are not something most employers worry about, but a felony is different, black and white, employers stop and throw away the application. So, what judges do is tell criminals, if you serve your time, complete this program, you can get out on this date, if you stay out of trouble until this date this charge will be removed and this parole officer will be your case worker to act as the courts agent and make sure you do what is required, if you fail you will be put back into jail and you will serve your remaining time in jail. And this works to, but it is far from 100%.
So what can we do to increase our success rate? I see many people that come into Jail and think their life is over, they cannot recover from this, its Jail the end...
They are the funniest, these are the people that have no idea how forgiving the system is, and they are also the most volatile, the highest level of suicide, the most dangerous, the first 24-48 hours is critical, but these are not what we are talking about here, these people are placed on suicide watch, checked constantly and are a huge part of what I personally do in my job, talking these people down to a level where they see things more clearly and realize they will be fine but now they have the county acting as their Father and watching them correct the mistake they have made, and then they move on in their life, but they almost never come back probably in 90% range.
But we are talking about the other people who do not get the message, What is it going to take to get these people to see the error in their ways and move on in productive lives?
I handle four sub-pods in the SMU Pod, I have an Intake Pod, 2 Medical Pods and the SMU Pod, think of it like this, Medical is broken bones but one Medical Pod is negative pressure for those with air borne diseases such as TB, SMU (the biggest Pod I watch) is broken minds or those with Mental Health concerns, our female Pod has a similar break down except we house all women in one pod where as men we need 5 pods for capacity.
I have to Clarify one other dynamic though, I work in a Jail in the most Republican County in Colorado, one of the wealthiest counties in the Nation, our criminal element is far from what you will see in the inner city, we see everything like any jail but on a much smaller scale, it surprises my family that we have murderers in our jail(not sure why I guess they are surprised that murder happens in our county) and we house for many other counties just like they house for us, most jails operate this way, we all help each other out. We have our specialties or types of criminals we do a good job housing, and we house criminals for the Federal Government, again just like many others, our inmate to Deputy ratio is somewhere around 15/25 to 1 depending on the week which is much lower then the state average which is I think 40/50 to 1, but our number is a bit skewed because we have a lot of construction going on, we have 2 new pods under construction and one older GP(Genera Population) pod completely under renovation to make current standards(which change constantly) This construction will take a year or so for the whole jail and then our ratios will increase a bunch, housing for other counties and the Federal Government is a money maker for us but we have to meet accreditation standards or lose our certifications so these down times are part of a normal cycle.
My point is that we have a really progressive thought process to reducing recidivism and that's why I like this conversation, its always a good idea to open your eyes and ears to new ideas.
Personally I am in favor of reform, we cannot sustain the current path, but again I have no answers since I think the real answer would be a change from the top down, and I don't think the people are willing to do that right now.
I do think that Jail is the key to reform, Prison is the end game.
