Thanks, Dwane Voegli, for posting the article from the Winona
Daily News by Judge Chaleen on the very important issue of our
penal system.
In response to your questions, first off, I'd say the best thing
we can probably do is follow the judge's advice: "So what should
our commissioners who inherited this problem do? We have to bring our
outdated jail up to today's standards and provide
minimum security cells in the basement or elsewhere. Then they
should
pass a resolution for our local legislators to take to the state Capitol
and undo failed mandatory laws and return DUI sentencing discretion to
the judges, who deal with it every day on a case-by-case basis and who
pass a resolution for our local legislators to take to the state Capitol
and undo failed mandatory laws and return DUI sentencing discretion to
the judges, who deal with it every day on a case-by-case basis and who
can control the local jail population."
My response to a couple of your specific questions is:
Jails are effective only insofar as they keep certain
people locked away from the rest of us. And there are indeed
some people who ought to be kept locked away, permanently. No,
Winona County ought not to build a new jail.
On the larger issue, I'm not sure how true this is of our locale,
but the national prison population in the United States is nothing
short of a scandal, with an unusually large proportion of inmates
drawn from the poor (usually minority) and drug violators.
According to U.S. Department of Justice statistics for the end of
2002, 20% of prisoners nationally were there for drugs. Also,
although there were only 450 white male prisoners for every 100,000
white male U.S. residents, there were 3,437 black prisoners per
100,000 blacks in the population and 1,176 Hispanic males per 100,000
Hispanic males in the population. Unless you believe that black
men are about 7 1/2 times and Hispanic men about 2 1/2 times more
prone to crime than white men, you have to see some terrible societal
ill here.
The solution we have for these groups is not only unfair (since
they lack the money for the best lawyers money can buy), but
ineffective. Possible solutions might include separating out
drug violators, including drunken drivers, and rehabilitating them
(except for the big dealers, who belong in prison, perhaps
permanently) and building a more equitable society and justice system
so that they poor do not suffer disproportionately to their lot.
They struggle too much already, outside the penal system.
Orval Lund
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