Wednesday, June 20, 2007

News of the Day, Wednesday, June 20, 2007

  • Good news, bad news in AZ. They've finally been able to fill up their vacant correctional officer backlog. But they still don't have enough beds for the current and growing population. So more private prisons (and more riots like the IN one?) on their horizon.
  • Poor Joan Petersilia keeps fighting the brave fight in CA, trying to get the state to move more attention and resources to rehab and finding other things to do with parole violators. She keeps beating her head on that wall so much you expect her forehead to cave in someday. But maybe that would get people's attention.
  • If she were doing the same thing in RI, she'd be popping the champaigne corks with what that state's legislature is doing.
  • CT's gov feels the pain of people needing medical marijuana . . . but vetoes the bill anyway. Says she doesn't risk people breaking the law . . . like there aren't already 13 other states that have done this. Good show of courage in the face of real suffering.
  • DE's letting victims of child abuse sue their abusers. This way of getting justice and redress--moving things to the civil courts--is a too unexplored means of moving away from our obsession with cost-ineffective prisons as the only source of those things.
  • More "governing through crime" in FL. Wanna do football, baseball, or weightlifting? Well, sign away your rights to probable cause.
  • Finally, the head of AR's (Arkansas, not Arizona) drug director says something smart: “I don’t … like to refer to the war on drugs because it overwhelms me, ” she said. “ I know I can’t win; but if I … change one person’s life, I’ve done something. People count, and families count. ” And then something, well, not so smart: One thing Flener doesn’t want to see is the decriminalization of drugs. “ I don’t think our society could, in any shape, form or fashion, afford the consequences, ” Flener said. I don't favor decriminalizing some drugs, but we're affording the crime and corrections costs associated with how we deal with drugs now? With this common inability to see what's going on clearly, don't see good things happening any time soon in AR (Arkansas, not Arizona).

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