Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Dallas needs to expedite in-jail hospital

Kudos to Dallas County Commissioner Maurine Dickey for pushing to expedite the process for building a hospital inside the Dallas County Jail, as reported by DallasBlog. Regular Grits readers know there's a dire, immediate need. For every month an inmate stays in the Dallas Jail, they're more likely to acquire a staph infection than they would be to roll snake-eyes shooting craps. Would you wanna roll the dice?

Dallas County needs to spend what it takes to get inmate healthcare up to snuff, or they'll wish they had if the feds appoint a monitor to run the system (as happened in California), and just send Commissioners the invoices for payment.

UPDATE: DallasBlog has the story of an innocent 78 year old woman who was allegedly mistreated and mistakenly held in jail for 4 days because of a bureaucratic error. Quite a tale. Give it a read.

NUTHER UPDATE: More discussion of the in-jail hospital idea at Dallas Sidebar.

No comments: