Posted on 07/16/2013 5:45:45 PM PDT by BenLurkin
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Residents in the city of Los Angeles held a rally Tuesday against a controversial plan to expand jail services in Los Angeles County.
KNX 1070′s Megan Goldsby reports community and religious leaders, scholars, youth activists and artists participated in a rally outside of the Board of Supervisors meeting in downtown Los Angeles.
Wearing orange shirts that read, “No Jails”, protesters urged officials not to spend up to an estimated $1.6 billion to build new jail cells rather than investing in public resources for the community.
“We already got the highest incarceration [rate] in the United States…why? There’s so much other things we could do with this money,” said one man.
Members of the Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) and LA No More Jails Coalition timed the rally as Vanir Construction Management was expected to present an independent report to the Board of Supervisors on five jail construction options for the county.
In the report dated July 5, Vanir presented four alternatives – none of which increase the number of beds available – ranging in cost from $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion. Each proposal calls for demolishing Men’s Central Jail and building a facility downtown to house all high- and medium-security inmates and provide for mentally ill criminals.
But coalition leaders say the proposal fails to create any plan that projects a lower jail population through the implementation of “well-founded alternatives and wrap-around services in the community”.
“There are clear alternatives that we could implement to reduce the jail population right now that would strengthen our communities and save the county over a billion dollars,” said coalition leader Mary Sutton. “Even though recent reports show that crime rates are down, the plan projects the need for the same number of jail beds ten years from now.”
The Vanir plan, which projects a 50 percent increase in the mental health population inside county jails, fails to provide alternative resources for the mentally ill and would affect primarily female inmates, according to CURB.
Coalition members say the county should end the Sheriff’s controversial jail expansion plan and instead use the millions of dollars received from the State in AB109 realignment to fund community-led drug and mental health treatment, housing, education, job training and family reunification programs.
What’s wrong with that fancy jail they built 12 years ago?
Too small apparently.
Bring the crime rate down in your communities and there will be no need for new jail cells.
Years ago I proposed a one time sweep up and “disappearing” of everyone wearing gang tattoos in L A County but people I suggested it to all reacted very negatively.
I’ll bet Sheriff Joe could build a jail for quite a bit less than that.
Easier and cheaper would be to put a border style fence around the city (with Hotel California gates to allow entry but not to leave) to keep the inhabitants from harming the rest of Californicate.
Lol... they should spend twice as much and Double the occupancy
Something that a lot of people never realize outside of the jails - most of the present inhabitants are there because of lazy prosecutors and awful police work. The jails are filled with murder suspects, rape suspects, and violent offenders. That the people quoted in the article are seeking to let out are people who should be in state prison serving near life sentences, or more appropriately, shot in the head or hung by the neck.
But that’s too cruel, and far too expensive to prosecute. So therefore they get jail sentences. County jail limits to one year terms, but it will surprise few that many of the inhabitants of the maximum security county jail have been there for years.
The best way to clean out the county jail is to put forward a concentrated effort to actually put those criminals on trial for the crimes they’ve committed, and sentence them to long prison terms.
But hey, in the eyes of the local DA who simply wants conviction rates for the next campaign, any time is good. Rape a woman? You’re going to jail for assault in the third degree with a one year sentence. And look, you’ve violated jail rules, you’ve got another six months added to your sentence.. Wash and repeat.
I do feel for the deputies who night after night have to release murderers from the jail as ever possible local charge has been exhausted - except the obvious charge of murder.
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