Texas conservatives reject Harper's Canadian crime plan

[Newsjock]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/10/17/pol-vp-milewski-texas-crime.html

Conservatives in the United States' toughest crime-fighting jurisdiction — Texas — say the Harper government's crime strategy won't work.

"You will spend billions and billions and billions on locking people up," says Judge John Creuzot of the Dallas County Court. "And there will come a point in time where the public says, 'Enough!' And you'll wind up letting them out."

... These comments are in line with a coalition of experts in Washington, DC, who attacked the Harper government's omnibus crime package, Bill C-10, in a statement Monday.

"Republican governors and state legislators in such states of Texas, South Carolina, and Ohio are repealing mandatory minimum sentences, increasing opportunities for effective community supervision, and funding drug treatment because they know it will improve public safety and reduce taxpayer costs," said Tracy Velázquez, executive director of the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute.

[provis99]

1. Harper is a Christian fundamentalist.

He's all about the punishment and suffering parts of Christianity, regardless of the effects.

[Kennah]

2. It's pretty bad when the Mayor of Perryville up stages you.

[pampango]

3. Love this: "...if you build 'em, I guarantee you they will come."

"It's a very expensive thing to build new prisons and, if you build 'em, I guarantee you they will come. They'll be filled, OK? Because people will send them there", said Representative Jerry Madden, a conservative Republican who heads the Texas House Committee on Corrections. "But, if you don't build 'em, they will come up with very creative things to do that keep the community safe and yet still do the incarceration necessary."'

"You will spend billions and billions and billions on locking people up," says Judge John Creuzot of the Dallas County Court. "And there will come a point in time where the public says, 'Enough!' And you'll wind up letting them out."

Marc Levin, a lawyer with an anti-tax group called Right on Crime, argues that building more prisons is a waste of taxpayers' money.

"We've see a double-digit decline in the last few years in Texas, both in our prison incarceration rate and, most importantly in our crime rate," says Levin. "And the way we've done it is by strengthening some of the alternatives to prison."

When a conservative republican and an anti-tax activist realize the futility of the prison-industrial complex (and are willing to speak publicly about it) you know things have gone past the point of there being any debate about it.