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manny

Excellent editorial and especially clear sighted comments by geezlouise and conniek.

Bottom line? Change can and will come only through pressure on legislative representatives.

That means we have to write a letter and call our representative today.

That means we have to participate in legislative oversight until legislators fix the gaping holes in this sinking ship.

Otherwise, our public silence gives legislators unwritten permission to continue mandatory sentencing and their unethical behavior in office.

There is little to no drug treatment programming in NV prisons, so, drug problems still exist upon release. Is this ethically correct governing? Putting inmates into an expensive dinghy with no oars?

Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto stated in a sun article on prison overcrowding SUN 25 Feb 07:

"Eighty-one percent of the state's 12,800 inmates has a substance abuse problem, she said. And 40 percent of the men and 70 percent of the women , in the state's prisons said methamphetamine was a factor in their crimes.”

With the powerful info in this article, what is the motive for continuing legislative inaction? The care and fertilizing of Nevada's socially, distinctly dysfunctional prison industrial complex?

Drug problems are medical problems that can be cured between doctors and patients before the law gets involved. How about authoring an ounce of prevention law for sponsored treatment?

By the way, 9/02/08 prison administration discontinued the package program. How many more prisoners will now have to give sex to get clothing in the rag black market inside prison walls?

When the prisons bankrupt Nevada, we can say we told them so. But, that will be of no comfort, because all of us on board this doomed pirate vessel will have already drowned.

Did anybody read this last year?

Prisons getting crowded
BY MARTHA BELLISLE • MBELLISLE@RGJ.COM • FEBRUARY 25, 2007

EXCERPT:
"You need to deal with who's coming in the front door," he said. "Education and treatment are the means of controlling the institutional population."

Supporting his point was data provided by Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

Eighty-one percent of the state's 12,800 inmates has a substance abuse problem, she said. And 40 percent of the men and 70 percent of the women , in the state's prisons said methamphetamine was a factor in their crimes.”

Where is reason? Logic? If NV legislators (and judges) were to require drug treatment and education under house arrest instead of in prison, there would be no issues of prison expansion… period! How hard is that? 81% of the population would not be there!

As it is, however, the tip of the iceberg is all that is visible regarding costs to maintain and expand NV prisons.

What about the costs to taxpayers resulting from prisoner and staff lawsuits churning through state and federal courts daily? There are some lulu’s coming through the pipeline as I write.

Did you read that a NV correctional officer won $350,000 in federal court this month for a warden firing him? He apparently spoke out against the warden for cutting inmate programs. I think he deserved to win that money.

Staff and prisoners will win more and MUCH BIGGER first amendment rights and medical cases before we get this dysfunctional freight train, NDOC, back on a track==on our current trip straight into state bankruptcy court!

If legislators had seen fit to mandate that NV prisons were certified to minimum standards by the American Correctional Association years ago, there could have been a ray of hope for both prisoners and staff. As it is, both have a shorter lifespan, not to mention a dismal quality of life.

Does this situation of NO MINIMUM STANDARDS also bleed into the mental and physical health of families, as well, who also live in torment?
Certainly.

All around, this is peak dysfunction, which can be corrected! NDOC... did the name change do anything? No corrections here, apparently.

It would have been nice to have had other input in this important article. For example, why was there nothing from prisoners’ families, the prisoners themselves who live with this disaster daily, or how about from Amnesty International?

How close are NV prisons to China and Iran when it comes to human dignity in prisons?

Both legislators and advisory committee members need multifaceted views and experiences of NDOC operations. Not just reports, or dry statistics. Have they ever visited NV prisons==unannounced? Talked to many there, on both sides of the doors? They must do so.

The research and use of numbers was great.

Every vote counts. Ask Harry Reid.