updated 6:11 p.m. CT, Wed., Aug. 13, 2008
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A federal court official asked a judge Wednesday to seize $8 billion from California's cash-strapped treasury to improve medical care at the state's overcrowded prisons.
Billions of dollars, not millions of dollars for Prisons……
[Lawmakers remain at odds over how to cope with California's $15.2 billion deficit] while the prison is trying to seize 8 billion dollars.
Tough sentencing guidelines are finally catching up to the tax payers as quoted in the article. [The system is packed with about 159,000 inmates, well above the prisons' designed capacity of about 100,000, in large part because of tough state sentencing laws].
This situation is going to only get worse and not only in California!
It is also such a hypocritical irony that citizens who rally behind lawmakers for tougher sentencing of criminals only then later cry when they have to pay for it with their taxes as if they didn’t know this when pushing for such laws.
I read a year or two ago how California was trying to again repeal parts of their famous three strike laws made famous in the late 80’s as they couldn’t afford the increasing numbers of inmates and the lack of available prison beds and how the same people that had voted for such laws now were having second thoughts and voting to repeal the famous laws.
What is the solution to this crisis????????
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26182912/
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A federal court official asked a judge Wednesday to seize $8 billion from California's cash-strapped treasury to improve medical care at the state's overcrowded prisons.
Billions of dollars, not millions of dollars for Prisons……
[Lawmakers remain at odds over how to cope with California's $15.2 billion deficit] while the prison is trying to seize 8 billion dollars.
Tough sentencing guidelines are finally catching up to the tax payers as quoted in the article. [The system is packed with about 159,000 inmates, well above the prisons' designed capacity of about 100,000, in large part because of tough state sentencing laws].
This situation is going to only get worse and not only in California!
It is also such a hypocritical irony that citizens who rally behind lawmakers for tougher sentencing of criminals only then later cry when they have to pay for it with their taxes as if they didn’t know this when pushing for such laws.
I read a year or two ago how California was trying to again repeal parts of their famous three strike laws made famous in the late 80’s as they couldn’t afford the increasing numbers of inmates and the lack of available prison beds and how the same people that had voted for such laws now were having second thoughts and voting to repeal the famous laws.
What is the solution to this crisis????????
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26182912/