By Just A Guy
Editors note: Just a guy was recently released from a California state prison. For the past year, he covered the prison system from the inside, and continues to comment on prisons, crime and law-enforcement issues.
Kudos to the Orange County Register for writing a piece not completely marred with negativity toward prisoners and for taking an objective view of the fucking mess in California.
I think it’s refreshing that a more mainstream media outlet has actually put out a piece that doesn’t label every prisoner in California (or the country) as an incorrigible ingrate with no future.
What is it going to take for the rest of the state to pick up pieces like this one? Where are the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Diego Union/Tribune? Why is it only small papers or independents and weeklies are telling the truth?
The writers of the OC Register article put the numbers out there for all to see — come on, California spends more than double that of Illinois per inmate. DOUBLE. There is no conclusive proof that this spending is doing shit. Well, it’s definitely doing shit, just not good shit! Lining someone’s pockets somewhere.
Quotes like this in the article crack me up: “Only four guards are assigned to the gymnasium at any given time; they watch from an elevated platform at one end of the floor. Traveling between the bunks, especially at the end of the gym, you are putting your life into the hands of bored criminals. The inmates are so close you can smell their sweat and stale breath.”
I guess the guards are all fresh and rosy and don’t have odors, kind of like when they stopped allowing visits because the swine flu outbreak was just occurring — but didn’t stop anything else, as if the only people that could get the swine flu were the inmates and their families.