We need jails. Some people are dangerous.
Jails aren't cruel and unjust. Overcrowded, undersized jails are cruel and unjust.
A national news story is the fate of the people locked up in D.C. jail because of their roles in the January 6 attack at the Capitol. They claim the place is a hell hole. They complain it is overcrowded, noisy, and dangerous. In fact, those inmates have it relatively good. They were moved from the D.C. Central Detention Facility (CDF) to the lower-security Central Treatment Facility (CTF) across the street. But I do not doubt that their situation is still miserable. That is the nature of jails in America.
Jackson County, Oregon has its own overcrowded, miserable jail. It needs to be replaced. This jail replaces another, smaller and much worse jail that served the county 45 years ago. The then-current jail was so overcrowded and inhumane that its condition was indefensible. The county signed a consent degree to stop adding new inmates. The county commissioners back in 1978 appointed a citizen's committee to advise them on the size and design of a new jail, the current one. I was 28 years old, a local boy returned from the east coast, an aide to a Democratic congressman. Perhaps the commissioners thought someone like me would be a liberal voice on the committee that included several cops, or at least give "liberal credibility" to the advice the committee offered if we had a consensus.
The committee listened to jail architects on where best to place guard stations so there would be sight lines in multiple directions, thus reducing staff requirements. We looked at issues like natural light, prisoner safety, prisoner hygiene, visitation spaces. The committee had consensus that we wanted a humane jail, not a hell hole. Our intentions were practical, too. A good jail is easier to manage and staff, the inmates are less troublesome, and legal liabilities to the county are smaller. Many people in jail are not convicted of anything and are presumed innocent. Yet they are incarcerated because they are not suitable for bail release. They require confinement, not torture. The committee considered the right size. We shocked the commissioners by advising a much larger jail than the presumed range Jackson County needed. I was part of that consensus. The county scaled it back. The county built what it had money for, not what it needed.
In 2020, Jackson County voters resoundingly defeated a proposal for a new jail. It was controversial for its proposed size. Anti-tax people voted, as always, against anything that involves taxes. But people in liberal circles also opposed it. A presumption circulated that police, prosecutors, and judges would fill a jail with some mix of jaywalkers, underage teens caught with marijuana, alcoholics, homeless people illegally sleeping under bridges, and people who were mentally ill. The idea was that American society was so eager to criminalize discrepancies to public order that we needed a big jail to sweep society's issues under the rug and out of sight. I heard it repeatedly: We need addiction recovery programs, we need affordable housing, we need mental health workers, not jails.
But we need jails, too. Sometimes my liberal friends have difficulty acknowledging that some people are dangerous. It offends their--and my--presumption that people are inherently good, or at least reformable. It offends their--and my--presumption that broader social forces of poverty, discrimination, bad parenting or schooling, childhood abuse, or something else, was to blame for their anti-social behavior. Therefore, a "punishment" mode like jail is a form of blaming the victim, and morally wrong.
Insofar as criminals are really victims-in-disguise, it just affirms my point that jails must be large enough to be humane. Inadequate jail space guarantees overcrowding and misery. Liberal resistance to jails is not humane. It's result is cruel. There is a sad reality that some people are dangerous. They need confinement where they cannot hurt others. Maybe at some later point in their lives they will be well-behaved and good neighbors, but for right now, they need to be off the streets.
Public safety should be a Democratic issue. The people most hurt by crime are poor and working people. The big progressive issues that motivate Democratic activists--climate, racial justice, misogyny, access to education and health care--only rise to prominent issues when the first-order issue of personal safety is secure. People who rob and burglarize are dangerous. People who drive 123 miles an hour on public streets will kill innocent people. The jail has a public list of who is incarcerated today and what they are charged with. Take a moment. Browse. Some have been found guilty. Some are awaiting trial. Start with the letter "A": Arson. Rape. Felon in possession of a firearm. First degree sexual abuse. . . . Pick a letter of the alphabet of surnames and scroll.
It isn't cruel to get dangerous people off the streets. It is cruel to let them be arrested and immediately released because there is no place for them in the jail.
Thanks, Peter, for your succinct, yet insightful, remarks on this divisive issue. I remember having a thoughtful discussion with some friends that were going to vote against the jail. They wanted to see a rehabilitative process alone. I held that we needed to pursue both, that we needed BOTH strategies at once and that overcrowded jails were inhumane, no matter your offense. We need t o move beyond the “either...or” approach to move forward. How does that happen?
Sorry I didn't listen to you.