Reading the Tuesday letter, “Case shows need to revamp system,” referring to Richard Clark and his confinement for homicide, prompts me to express my opinion about the entire Washington state criminal incarceration program. One reason our jails are so full is that there is no deterrent to stay out of them. Many criminals have it better on the inside than they did out on their own. They have a warm bed, three squares a day, TV to watch and games to play. On the local TV news recently they talk about the long list of bank robbers who are getting out of prison and within a week or two commit a bank robbery to support their drug habit. Maybe if they’d had it bad in prison, they’d think twice about having to go back.
Many have heard about the Maricopa County, Ariz., jail where the inmates live in tents. They wear black and white striped uniforms and any time they leave the jail for work details they do so as a chain gang. They get three TV channels; news, education and weather. They get no coffee because there is no nutritional value in it. If they misbehave, they are punished with segregation and fed nutriloaf, a bland, baked meal that contains the essentials for nutrition all blended together. The Maricopa County system has been in place for many years now and guess what? They get few returnees compared with other institutions. Why? It’s obvious. They don’t like it in there. But the people around Phoenix love it! Their system works!
If we stop babying our inmates and providing them with excuses regarding why they offended (it’s society’s fault or they had a bad experience as a youngster, etc.) and get them to accept that that they themselves are responsible for their own actions and consequences, just maybe they will figure out that it’s more rewarding to get a job and be productive, and maybe the incarceration rate will decrease and we can spend taxpayer money to fix roads rather than build more and bigger jails and prisons.
Harold Sweeney
Lake Stevens
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