Ma'am; I think you are missing the point. Incarceration is not just about drving a person's will into the dirt with non stop torture until death pardons him. It is as much about protecting the prisoner from the wrath of vengeance as it is about protecting society. Do prisons really protect either society or prisoner? Is it not true that few are improved by brutality, and that prisons are one long experience of brutality. Why should we expect people to be made better by a system that makes so many worse. If virtually all people in prison are repeat offenders, how is the legal system improving them, or protecting us? We cannot afford to imprison everyone, and so it is fortunate that our police only catch a fraction. But, at that, Law, law enforcement, and prisons account for huge amounts of government budget, and private moneys. Think of it as an immense negative make work project where money changes hands, but no one does nothing, and nothing gets done. And I am not advocating slavery for prisoners because if brutality is the goal, there are cheaper methods than slavery. No; I would have the punishment fit the crime, and not all the crimes that go unsolved. I would not have any prisoner be a target for all the hatred and frustration of legal society. I would try to remember that a punishment of a prisoner is a punishment to his family, and to all that wish him well, and ultimately to all of society. There is no way that society as a whole is not injured by crime, and so punishment should be impecably just, so that any injury is not made worse. We know there are cheaper methods for controlling the behavior of felons, but the object should be only the protection of society, even the society of those within captivity. If you do not expect that justice is medicine to cure every ill in society, then I don't want to know you, because those who do not believe in justice invariably treat all their fellows as brutes, and seek to control them for their own benefit, and so injure the whole of humanity. Instead of contemplating torture for those who have hurt us and may hurt us still, think of how to restore him to his honor so he may become a reliable citizan and neighbor. In this, the prisoner as a free agent must freely choose his own path, and his own fate. But; if for protection, we exclude others, there is no reason to make of prison a humiliating and degrading experience. Thanks. Sweeney.

Oh, Ms. Saunders, how dangerous a little bit of information in the hands of the loud and opinionated can be. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The California Department of Corrections and "Rehabilitation" is in receivership by the federal government after years of litigation over its inability to handle even basic issues of managing prisoner health and welfare. And it's not just about prisoner health and welfare--much of the problem is dealing with communicable diseases that can be and often are passed on to the prison guard population and to the citizens of the state. ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
And guess where those prisoners go when CDCR finally decides to dump them. Not anywhere near your front or back yard, I would wager, but right out there into the neighborhoods of innocent people who don't have the means to escape to Fantasyland where columns like yours get written. ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
I won't go into the horror stories of how many prisoners basically lost their human existence to the “three strikes” tag for petty crimes. I fully understand that supporters like you of measures like three strikes and for that matter, the death penalty, don't give a hoot if a few innocent people get stampeded in the mad rush. That's a small price to pay for allowing the mob the sweet opportunity to indulge in vengeance, even if there's a chance it is taken out on the wrong guy. It's the feeling in the gut that counts. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
One of the central issues for the prisons is overcrowding, and that's because regardless of what we manage to build, we DO need, and desperately so, more prison space to handle the prison population, at least until we start doing something about why our failing social and cultural fabric is generating so many prisoners in the first place. We just happen to be out of money to support that mushrooming, money-sucking industry. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
So it is laughable to see you write that in the last 14 years Sacramento has “authorized and completed only one new prison.” If you care to include what had been “authorized” but not completed at the time three strikes was voted in, we are looking at 12 prisons having been opened since 1992, and that's 12 out of the 24 California has opened since the state began in 1980 what was described in the year 2000 in a New York Times article as “the biggest prison building boom in the nation's history.” I guess you would also find it insignificant that, according to the December 1998 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, the state at that time "held more inmates in its jails and prisons than France, Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and the Netherlands combined." ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Your fingers must be so busy burning up the keyboard you haven't had time to notice that the California budget has been running on empty for just about the entire time since 1992, and right now we are staring at a $14 billion or more shortfall that will have us going long into the summer before the state can figure this one out and get us a stopgap budget so we can limp along until next fiscal year's meltdown. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
It's the money, stupid. We haven't built more prisons because we don't have it. And taxpayers who must be shaken down for more of it are starting to wonder if there just isn't something wrong with this picture. They don't want any more. They want a different approach. The three strikes temper tantrum and subsequent don't-worry-be-happy party are over. They're looking at hard cold reality refusing to go away and feeling that big fat hangover pounding away at the soul of the state. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
You need to take a closer look at the great kingdom of CDCR. The whole thing is crumbling away as it sucks 5.3 billion dollars out of the state's general fund per year, and that does not include the cost in taxpayer-generated federal dollars of managing the receivership. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
We've turned the prison guard union, CCPOA, into just about the most powerful union in the world because they've got us by the short hairs. We need them so badly now they can extort us for just about anything they want. Heads have rolled one after the other in the CDCR administration because no one there has a clue how to do the job with the failing dollars CDCR has available to it. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
And, oh yes, crime. I just feel ripples of warmth and safety flow through me in anticipation when I think about walking the streets of cities like Los Angeles, Fresno, Oakland, San Francisco, and even Emerald City, where our bankrupt state government sits and hides behind that curtain of manufactured fiscal magic. .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
I guess YOU think we are making some kind of progress against crime, but I doubt if any of the rest of us do. At least those of us who have to ride buses and walk city streets and do unglamorous things like that. Personally, I think it's high time we woke up to the chaos we ultimately get when government inaction invites voters to throw a temper tantrum.

Re: Masako;
Sir; I have to thank you for that comment. Rehabilitation is a subject I try to avoid for the obvious fact that many people leave prison worse than they went in. And there is little that can be done with them once they have become brutalized, and have begun to look at society as the target. The exclusion of people from society is the basis of tragedy. Police stories, and crime mysteries have always been comedies, looking at the same problem from the point of view of society made whole. The thing is, with a minimum diet, and a minimum of health care, if a person's life expectancy is greater in prison than without, then there is a huge problem outside that people are glossing over in order to claim the best of all worlds. How many people in prisons actually belong in an asylum? How many suffer from some mental deficiency that no amount of punishment will remedy? How many are physically deformed, and really looking for safe harbor. When we ask how long we can rationally hold a drug abuser we quit asking what reality he is trying to escape. I don't feel I have to escape my reality, but I am not everyone; and the presumption that any of these prisoners are just like you or I, always rational, never bitter, never heartbroken, and never in such emotional pain that crime make sense, is false. I don't have to feel for them. In fact, most of them are beyond hope. Rather, if it is possible, as it is, to see this society abusing more and more of the average person to the end of their wits, until hate-full and sniping at fellow citizens; where is the difference between the criminal and the public? What is it going to take to push the whole country over the edge, to spur us to international war, or to suicidal pollution just so we can hang onto our personal fantasy one more day. When we go to war with countries like Iraq to kill a dictator, why do we kill all the people who have no power in their lives. Prisoners before they were prisoners had no power in their lives. Isn't that the crime? Isn't democracy the power in their lives that every person needs. Clearly the people want power in their own hands. The people all want to deal out justice as they see fit, and the reason penalties must be so harsh is that law does not work for the peaceful, or for the criminal, and all we have left to control anyone in the populaton is fear. Be afraid. Lock your doors. Hate your neighbors. Injure him at every opportunity. Deny him justice. The reason I do not support law enforcement is not that it does not work for the prisoner, and does not make him whole with his punishment, but that it does not work for any of us, and only makes a bad problem worse. Thanks. Sweeney

lso in the prison they put my son in with hardened criminals, murders, rapist, he was accused of stealign a purse, the officers wrote up (as usual a story worse than what happened) my son was ID in the bright lights of a police car from yards away and only by a red jacket, then later they ID someones else and named someone else as the suspect yet they had my son and that was enough for them. Now my so n is facing another charge because in prison the guards let the men of each group have :shot callers" these guys make the younger more scared young men do things that they fear if they dont they or their families will be killed. My son had no problems in two years there, keeping head low trying to get his education and this is what has happened. This is a big problem and he has a daughter out here waiting for him and now who knows how long it will be. All in the name of justice. As i watched all the proceedings and watched the DA at work forcing these people to plea no contest which might as well be guilty because they fear worse will happen.
You explain that to this little 6 year old gilr who cries every night for her daddy