The Best Solution to California’s Prison Overcrowding Crisis

Los Angeles, CA—The State of California’s prisons are overcrowded, the state is broke and they have no choice but to release thousands of violent offenders on the street.  Crime will skyrocket as a result. 

The most dangerous are the convicts between the ages of 18 and 35.  There is almost no hope with early releases they will not be victimizing others again.  The damage will cost taxpayers far more than building new prisons. 

There are those prisoners that are elderly and disabled.  Some are blind, crippled and even suffer from dementia.  Others have advanced cancers and serious heart disease.  I really don’t care what these people have done.  If they are harmless we should not be wasting money keeping them behind bars.  Most of these people won’t be doing much of anything but filling assisted living and nursing homes.  If they are too frail to inflict violence there’s really not much risk. 

What kind of violence can some inflict on others if they are attached to wheelchairs, oxygen bottles and walkers? 

We need all the prison space for young offenders we can get.  California already does not sentence their felons to nearly as long sentences as other states anyway.  The young inmates are the real threat to public safety.  If they are not in cages they will rob, rape and kill.

It’s clear that thousands of able-bodied criminal predators will be prowling the streets.  California’s law-abiding citizens need to rethink leaving their handguns at home.  Despite California’s unconstitutional gun laws the right to survival supersedes the fanciful and misguided whims of the ivory tower types elected to the state assembly.

 

The Phil Spector School of Rock, at The Rock.

Corcoran State Prison, CA—In this tough prison there are few bright spots.  Charles Manson, Sirhan Sirhan and many other convicted criminals who have committed despicable crimes wait here to simply die.   

Most other inmates will quickly get out and the rate of return is astronomical. Of course they destroy lives along the way.  Our correctional institutions do anything but correct.  They are almost all, in reality advanced schools of crime and violence.

We have locked up millions of young people in what we call correctional institutions.  We demand they turn their lives around but have made that daunting task impossible.  Perhaps it’s because we place them with one another where they can form peer groups of despair, destruction and depravity.  This concept can only fail.

Most of these convicted losers come from ignorance, poverty and are raised by the worst mentors society has to offer.  We only make things worse for them.

I have no magic cure for the drug addicted but for others we can reclaim lost and stolen lives.  We can do this with the resources we already have.

To succeed in society we all need skills.  What prisons offer can barely help people obtain and keep the lowest paying jobs.  Criminal records will keep them from conventional employment because nobody wants to take unnecessary risks by hiring felons.

Entertainment provides thousands of jobs and felons can get work there if they obtain skills and can behave themselves.  We don’t perform background checks on the people making CD’s, DVD’s and working the nightclub entertainment circuit.  The only thing that counts is if they can take the rest of us on that special ride.

Prisons have the talent to do this but it’s the ineffective losers who run them that are barely superior to the inmates.   The talent for this already lies within their walls.

Musical genius Phil Spector is rotting in the California prison system.  He has no choice, but the people housing him do.  They can give Spector a few perks, equipment and let him bring musical skills to fellow prisoners.   This man made many millionaires out of everyday people wandering through New York’s Brill Building. 

I’d start, The Phil Spector School of Rock.  I’d first make a call for musical instruments to be donated.  I’d create a magnet prison for inmates statewide that want to learn music and let them earn admission through good behavior and motivation and inclination.  

Phil Spector could be convinced to become the dean of this venture because he is qualified and all too available.  We need not guess that Spector has his own needs for creativity too. 

Imagine for a moment the implications of such a venture.  Students learning, great music and a soon there’d be weekly TV broadcast like Austin City Limits from a prison!  Along the way how many lives could we save?  How many fewer murders, robberies and violent crimes would be stopped because inmates develop a new passion other than crime?

What we are doing now is pure failure.  What do we have to lose by trying this?  After that, Drama, Dance and Comedy schools could emerge from inside every prison in America.  We can make great things happen if we at least try.

Charging for Prison Visits Should be a Crime

Phoenix, AZ—There is a movement in the Legislature here to begin charging visitors $25.00 every time they visit an inmate. I call that cruel and unusual punishment and its downright stupid.

There is probably not a psychiatrist on the planet that would endorse this terrible idea. Cutting off inmates from the outside world and their families would make them even more dangerous than they are already.

Visitation is not a right but a privilege and is in and of itself a behavior management tool. Inmates that want to receive visits have no choice but to behave. Taking this management tool away will cost lives in the long run. Immediately this bureaucratic brain-fart will create more fiscal problems than it will solve.

Prison officials complain that they must conduct expensive background investigations on visitors for security reasons. They claim they are looking for a way to reduce costs. I can help them in this area a lot by suggesting they take advantage of new technology that would eliminate and reduce their costs significantly.

Skype.com is a free telecommunication site that allows even international video calls to be made for free. Sometimes just the distance that the prisons are from civilization is a real hardship on prisoner's loved ones. Skype.com would actually increase visits without requiring all of that labor-intensive screening, frisking and visitor crowd control.

Either the inmate is brought to a simple Ipad or the Ipad is brought to the inmate. The video call is made and they can visit as long as the prison will allow. Of course the prisons will want to take steps to insure the Ipads are not used for nefarious purposes. That’s easy to monitor. Additionally the audio from the visits can be collected and stored for prison investigative purposes.

I know of at least one inmate whose mother has to spend a significant amount of money to visit her inmate/child because she lives in Germany. Now that’s a hardship. Skype.com calls are free.

Let’s say for the sake of argument that it still costs money for the prisons to maintain the equipment. Charging the Skype.com prison visitor a small fee under $7.00 would prove to be much cheaper for prisoner’s families than paying current transportation cots with the high price of fuel these days.

The idea of punitive punishment for prison inmates will always be popular no matter how poorly these things are thought out.