Welcome to Texas justice: You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride.
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- Blawg Wisdom
- Evan Smith, Editor-in-chief and publisher, The Texas Tribune
- The Austin Chronicle
- Emily Bazelon, Slate
- San Antonio Current
- Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
- Erica Grieder, The Economist
- Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly
- Doug Berman, Sentencing Law & Policy
- Marie Gottschalk, author of 'Caught'
- DallasBlog
- Scott Medlock, Texas Civil Rights Project
- Solomon Moore, NY Times criminal justice correspondent
- Donald Lee, Texas Conference of Urban Counties
-Attorney Bob Mabry, Conroe
- Corey Yung, Sex Crimes Blog
Tommy Adkisson,
Bexar County Commissioner
- Dirty Third Streets
- Texas Public Policy Foundation
David Jennings, aka "Big Jolly"
John Bradley,
Former Williamson County District Attorney, now former Attorney General of Palau
- To the People
Contact: gritsforbreakfast AT gmail.com
7 comments:
And the one comment in the linked story is a naive suggestion that higher pay would end corruption of prison guards. It won't. It just makes the bribes cost more. As an example, take Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Richard Nutt. He was the highest paid deputy at the department, and also one of the biggest drug dealers in Houston: http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Police-suspect-accused-Harris-deputy-protected-1605403.php
And if any federal prison guards at ADX Florence read this, Nutt's son is a child molester. You may want to pass it on to the inmates because as we all know, the apple (or in this case, the Nutt) never falls far from the tree: http://mugshots.com/US-Counties/Texas/Polk-County-TX/Richard-Bryan-Nutt.8325495.html
Same song, umpteenth verse. I think the restraint to taking bribery or otherwise getting sucked in to the inmate machine remains based in the basic character and moral code of the individual. Poverty and addiction may grease the wheels, but only if the staff member has considered the options beforehand.
The old, frequently reprinted articles "Downing a Duck", source unknown, and "A Guard in Gangland" from Texas Monthly a decade+ ago remain great studies of this problem.
This is something I never ever understood. Yes, in the day, I would give offenders cigarettes & coffee to establish rapport. However, I would always ask the escorting officer, Warden, and/or ranking officer for permission & told them the reason why I was doing it. Sometimes, it would help expose those feigning symptoms of schizophrenia, particularly paranoia. Many people with schizophrenia, paranoid type, believe their food and/or drink is being poisoned. Often, this would help expose those faking symptoms.
But, to give an offender anything is the unpardonable sin in the Bible of adult corrections.
"The Games Criminals Play" used to be mandatory reading. If you work in corrections as a new boot, it would be wise to buy this book. Furthermore, if you need a refresher course in how not to fall to offender manipulation, read it again! http://www.amazon.com/Games-Criminals-Play-Profit-Knowing/dp/0960522603
I've been investigating corrupt offices for many years now and I'll say this much, no matter the pay, no matter their position and no matter their looks an officer has been warned time and time again about being corrupt and yet they pay no mind to the warning. Yet you look at most Police departments and look at the corruption there. Prison guards are not the only ones doing this.
I agree that higher pay doesn't stop corruption. I think it helps, however, because a guard that is well-paid is less likely to risk his or her pay check than someone who must become corrupt to increase their income. One solution, along with better pay, is to make guards more accountable for their actions, such as imprisonment for being corrupt, and not giving convicted guards special favors (like judges usually do for the police) when they are sentenced.
How about this. Don't become a prison guard in the first place. Its just helping the System keep convicting hard working innocent people! = less tax payers dollars being spent, less prisons being built etc. All these excessive sentences have got to stop. With today's technology, put real peeps on monitors and make them pay monthly cost for monitoring, etc. Guaranteed the expense to tax payers would be a lot less than it is right now @ $45k per year per inmate in the grand old state of Texas!
Actually the war on drugs needs to stop first. But it won't. It's making way too many people filthy rich. But the last poster has a great solution. It will never happen though. But what I do see happening is this. Soon offenders will be required to pay back their cost of incarceration. A man/woman will do 5 years, be released and owe the state for their time monetarily as well. $45k a year times 5 years equals 225k. I absolutely see this becoming a reality. They've started charging inmates for their medical and psychiatric care already. The entire prison/judicial system needs to be overhauled and revamped. DA's need to no longer be elected and conviction rates need to not be the sole goal. Justice and Truth need to be the goal.
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