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: Grits for Breakfast

What options besides jail building for Waco?

So what should McLennan County do to reduce jail overcrowding instead of building a new private jail?In my view they need plans to address the supply side of the equation; counties statewide face the same problems, and they cannot build all their way out of the dilemma. According to these data from the Commission on Jail Standards (pdf), McLennan County has the second highest incarceration rate in Texas among counties with more than 200,000 people, incarcerating more than 4% of its population. More than 20% of McLennan's pretrial detainees (95 out of 473 as of April 1) are charged only with misdemeanorsMore than half of McLennan's jail inmates were incarcerated awaiting trial as of April 1st (pdf), while not too many years ago the statewide average was only 30%...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on May 28, 2008 (boomark / email).