Nerditorial: Son of Jail-zilla

So, the new plan is for a big-ass County Jail that is not quite as big as the 700-plus-bed 80-plus-acre $150 million Jail-zilla project that could have survived a zombie apocalypse well enough to serve as the setting of Season Six of The Walking Dead.

This newer, more modest facility is only about 600 beds, and likely lacks the Deluxe Zomb-pocalypse Leather Interior and MP3 Player option.

For an excellent summary of the state of the search for a new County Jail today, take a look at Riley Sweeney's article in the Cascadia Weekly. 

Here is the problem with Son of Jail-zilla as I see it...

[Remember, Apexnerd doesn't work in law enforcement and has no more insight into public works than any other opinionated and partially educated private citizen.]

Even Son of Jail-zilla isn't taking into account this new Age of Austerity. And the Safe Jail Now folks aren't getting that fact.

You see, gentle reader, we are now living in the early phase of a much celebrated Age of Austerity. It's all about tightening our belts and making tough fiscal choices.

But Son of Jail-zilla is a continuation of an Age of Prosperity approach to incarceration.

You see, the United States famously (and statistically provably) has one of the highest incarceration rates per capita in the civilized world.

Part of the reason we have done that is for the same reason we have a military that is as expensive as most of the rest of the modern countries in the world combined (also statistically provable)

Because we had an enourmous amount of money and the willingness to spend it.

Once upon a time, not so long ago... we could afford to jail as many citizens as we felt like jailing because we had the money to spare.

"It is a small price to pay to keep dangerous people off the streets," said the warriors on the frontline of the war on crime and drugs and... stuff...

"I don't mind paying taxes for more jails and prisons," said a bunch of conservative idiots on every day except April 15...

The remnants of this sensibility, as it applies to the County Jail, are in evidence now.

First, local conservative blogger Wally from Wally Wonders Why explained why we need as large a jail as possible. 

...We need bigger prisons in general, not because we are going to lock up more people for petty crimes, but because about 20 years ago we as a society decided that on your 3rd strike you were out for at least 25 years to life. ...

And then Ken Mann appeared on the Joe Show, where he talked about County government in general and briefly spoke about the Jail. 

[The Sheriff] and the Jail Deputy Sheriff are running the biggest free health care clinic in Whatcom County... two million dollars a year...
...
...we've had people in their on dialysis... and getting chemotherapy...

[this portion of the podcast can be found at about the 20 minute and 15 second mark.]

Now, the problem with Wally is that he seems to believe that in this Age of Austerity we can still afford the Three Strikes laws.

We can't. 

They are very expensive. 

It costs a lot of money to hold a person in custody for an arbitrarily long sentence such as several decades because of committing three felonies.

The three strikes law doesn't restrict itself to felonies of violence. It's just three felonies of any kind and then the State gets to house someone for 25 years to life. At tax payer expense.

In an authentic Age of Austerity, you have to be picky about who you put in jail for 25 years to life.

In an Age of Austerity, it is cheaper to let a judge decide the length of a sentence. Because, you know. Austerity.

The problem with Ken Mann's comments on the cost of health care in the County Jail is that one of the reasons the costs of medical care for jailed persons is so very high is because we are clearly putting people in Jail who don't need to be there.

Remember, jail usually is for people awaiting trial to insure they appear in court before they are charged with anything. Relatively few people in a County Jail are serving time for a crime after conviction. (Those persons more typically go to prisons and penitentiaries.)

So, why do we need to incarcerate someone who needs dialysis, exactly? 

Is someone whose kidneys are failing some sort of a flight risk?

The same thing goes for people who need chemotherapy, and other procedures that a person of ordinary prudence could be forgiven for associating with a person who is in no shape to evade local authorities.

The fundamental problem with the County Jail being advocated by Sheriff Elfo (a man whom I hold in high esteem) and the Safe Jail Now group is that it appears to be a 20th-Century Age-of-Prosperity approach to public safety.

It is the conservative-libertarian end of the political spectrum that have insisted most shrilly that we are now in an Age of Austerity. But they seem unwilling to look at their own political comfort zones when faced with tough economic choices in terms of public spending. We will just get rid of NPR and PBS, and still spare no expense when it comes to jails, prisons, and the like.

That won't work.

The most powerful and fiscally effective way to reduce the cost of local government is to put fewer people in jail in general. And that means rethinking our entire approach to criminal justice.

Forgive me if I don't hold my breath waiting for that conversation to begin.