Empty Jails--In So Many Ways

Allow me to point you in Kuff's direction, who also crossposts to Grits for Breakfast, on the push to build more prisons and county jails. Just who will be staffing these places? Kuff has a couple of solutions:

Well, hey, if we're going to have illegal immigrants building our border fences, why not let the inmates be the guards? At least in this state, you'll never have to worry about a labor shortage!

Although Kuff kids us about this, well, this was done before. Let's not forget the building tenders program which helped bring about the Ruiz v. Estelle lawsuit. Inadequate security – claimed to be the result of too few guards, sometimes resulting in the handing over of supervision of whole sections of prisons to inmates (known as "building tenders") who assisted guards.

Then Kuff adds another solution: it occurs to me that one decent source for the generally young, male workers you'd need for the prison industry would be...Mexican immigrants.

I'll just stick with Whitmire's idea of improving rehabilitative programs for inmates; perhaps going further and greatly improving ex-offender reentry programs. I would suggest the State of Texas read some research from experts, such as Wilkinson and Lowenkamp who tell us that even these programs must be community-oriented as a means of building trust with those whom we want to succeed post-incarceration. Perhaps we should be electing judges who are seeking actual equal justice, instead of notches on their belts for future political aspirations.

I know...I know...we're in Texas. But social attitudes have never changed around here unless something was legislated, or the people responded with new elected leaders that make changes.