When you write to one reporter, make certain always to copy the main email address too   opinion@sacbee.com  so at least one other person sees it and it doesn't just get deleted. 

 jhill@sacbee.com
 

"..the Department of Corrections has "been underfunded for a long time." 

This is putting it mildly!  Please help come to our rescue.  Society needs to know how their tax dollars are being spent and housing mentally ill and non violent prisoners is not the way I want my tax dollars spent.  Shorten prison terms and get these people rehabilitated and back to society to support themselves.  Sitting twiddling their thumbs while guards sit in towers and behind locked doors earning high pay plus overtime is not helping our societal issues of crime and criminals in the least.  The keyword is rehabilitated. 

We need help to get these human beings education, medical treatment  and total 
assistance for the mentally ill who were thrown to the winds when released from mental hospitals and now live in the streets committing crimes just to be able to eat.  Our prisons are not meant to house the mentally ill.  Human beings die frequently due to lack of medical treatment in a timely manner.  How are people with no teeth going to become employed when they leave prison. 

What type of business would give a toothless applicant a chance at a job.  Yet 
dental work is almost non existent in our prisons where young people are sitting out their sentences.  Too bad you say, yet that is inhumane to say the least and .....  Do we want to support them forever?  Our system is set up to do just that.  How can we expect the drug addicts to get drug free and return to society clean when drugs are supplied to them while incarcerated by the prison guards themselves?  I call that job security!  The revolving door assures some jobs without worry. 

Our system needs revamping.  We need a completely different philosophy on dealing with people sent to prison by the courts.  What is truly best for society?  Certainly not spending our tax dollars on punishment for twenty, forty or one hundred years!  The punishment time should be short and the rehabilitation time longer.  Help to change thinking, ability to think and education are the answers.  Housing of the mentally ill is not a prison function, yet a large number of them are being housed there because the court system nor the prison system seem to know what to do with them. 

Our society needs educating and help to understand how our money is actually 
being spent.  I am betting there would be a lot of sleepless nights if the Christians in our society knew what they were supporting.  I know you are not allowed inside the prison to actually talk freely with prisoners even if they are willing to talk.  What about our freedom of press to print the truth, the whole truth?  That does not count with prisoners.  The truth might get out.  We must depend on you to dig for the information in bits and pieces to present the rest of the story. 

But now we talk instead of budget cuts and prisons again are targeted.  We cannot properly feed the human beings in prisons now, and to cut budgets would be even more inhumane.  Certainly they will NOT cut guards pay checks, or numbers of guards, or overtime without further cuts on the prisoners themselves. 

Thank you again for the message that you have gotten out to the public.  Hopefully you will hear from more of us on the subject. 

Shirley