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Push for expanded jail by Harris Sheriff ill-conceived

Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia wants to reframe the debate over jail bulding - hoping to succeed where his GOP predecessor failed - by portraying an expanded booking center and extra beds as providing services for the mentally ill. However, Marc Levin and Ana Yañez Correa rightly suggested to the Houston Chronicle that "The costs of running a new building - utilities, staffing, maintenance - will compete for tight budget dollars with reforms that would divert more mentally ill arrestees into treatment instead of cells."Designating 1,200 beds for the mentally ill may sound like do-gooder public policy, but in the corrections context that simply frees up 1,200 spaces for other new prisoners because there are always more than 1,200 mentally ill offenders in the jail at any give time...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on June 21, 2010 (boomark / email).