28-08-11, 01:47 PM
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insignificant data point
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 3,799
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Jail mates as nocturnal animals and the key to economic growth
The New York Times reports:
Out of Jail and Onto the Street, Alone, in the Wee Hours
By BRANDI GRISSOM
It was 1 a.m. when Acy Williams, a slight, 53-year-old homeless man, walked out of the Harris County Jail and onto the dark, desolate streets of downtown Houston. He wore plastic flip-flops, dingy scrubs and a black fedora. He had no money and no phone, and the Houston Metro buses ran infrequently at that late hour. He decided he would just have to walk several miles across the city to the spot in South Houston where he hoped his belongings were still safely stowed.
“I’m going to try the mercy of the streets,” he said. “It’s going to be a long walk.”
Mr. Williams is one of the dozens of inmates who are turned loose every day, around the clock, from that huge lockup. In fact, in county jails statewide, inmates are often released in the dark of night — sometimes miles from town — with little or no money and no transportation. In Cameron County, in the Rio Grande Valley, a woman who had just been released was killed when a car struck her as she walked away from the jail in the middle of the night.
Others have reported being physically and sexually assaulted as they tried to make their way home.
Despite the horror stories and pleading from inmates’ advocates and their families, state lawmakers this year failed to approve legislation that would limit jail releases to daylight hours. The Sheriffs’ Association of Texas opposed the measure, arguing that the problem should be solved locally and not mandated by lawmakers.
“Sheriffs in many counties seem to say that it doesn’t matter what happens once the person is not in custody,” said Diana Claitor, founder of the Texas Jail Project, which advocates for local jail inmates.
Harris County Jail, the third largest in the nation, books and releases about 400 inmates a day, said Alan Bernstein, a spokesman for the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. For each release, fingerprints are collected to ensure that the correct person is being released, belongings must be retrieved from two locations, and inmates are transferred to a holding area.
“Do we release some people in the middle of the night?” Mr. Bernstein said. “Yes, we do, because legally we don’t have the authority to keep them — and they’re not volunteering to stay.”
On the Thursday morning this month when Mr. Williams was released, about a dozen inmates trickled out of the giant facility between midnight and 2 a.m. Cars, filled with families, friends and others who had waited hours for inmates to be released, lined the street around the lockup. Just beyond the jail’s perimeter, advocates say, awaits a gantlet of danger, particularly for women: drug dealers, pimps and human traffickers eager to prey on the vulnerable and desperate.[...] Is this the business opportunity that the US needs to rise up out of recession? Apparently around one per cent of Americans are in prisons and jails. Their removal from the economy improves apparent labour productivity. America could be on an economic boom if it locked up two per cent of its people.
Labour productivity would soar!
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