Letters to the Editor: Which pathway will we choose on cruel conditions in Ky. jails?
Solutions to jail issues
The Herald-Leader series, “Caged”, reported on the cruel and inhumane conditions created by severe overcrowding in Kentucky’s county jails. Very few politicians or readers reacted in your pages to the articles at the time, perhaps because many readers cannot relate to the plight of people whose lives are desperate enough to lead them to experiment with drugs. But the horrors suffered by low-level offenders in my own county’s jail was appalling to read about. No person should have to endure such affronts to their humanity.
Finally, two recent Herald-Leader op-eds offered remedies that ought to get serious consideration from our political and community leaders. As a starting point, officials need to stop using those who get crosswise of the law as virtual coins that can be pressed into slots in revenue machines to fund even more prison construction. Those “coins” are people who need help, help not available in county jails, to dealing with the lives they are dealt and the choices they make.
A prisoner who is cruelly confined and punished is likely to resume a life of crime upon release. But a humanely treated and rehabilitated inmate can return to a life of benefit to himself and the community at a much lower cost. Which pathway will we choose?
Arthur T. LaBar, Richmond
Ask the questions
I retired from the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the National Institute of Corrections and have authored a book, The Quiet Revolution: Shattering the Myths About the Criminal Justice System.
In response to a recent Herald-Leader opinion piece, writer Ed Monahan uses the misinformation of the justice reform movement to justify a narrative.The anti-incarceration argument tells us that incarceration doesn’t work when crime rates are rising. When crime rates drop, as in the present, we’re told it isn’t needed.
He says that “Kentucky has declining crime rates, both overall and violent. Both are below national rates. From 1985 to 2018 the overall Kentucky crime rate declined by 26 percent and the KY violent crime rate declined by 30 percent. Kentucky’s criminal cases declined from 250,034 in 2005 to 216,956 in 2018, a decline of 33,078 cases over 14 years...Yet our incarceration rate in Kentucky increased”.
This is like saying that the rate of illiteracy dropped tremendously, yet the states’ school enrollments increased.
Nationally, crime rates dropped dramatically during the timeline mentioned by Monahan. This was also a time of dramatically increasing incarceration. Now, many states are gambling that releasing more inmates will make them safer.
We’re told we have “mass incarceration”, yet Kentucky, like the rest of the country, has more than two-thirds of its corrections population under community supervision (alternatives to incarceration) rather than locked up.
We accept the answers provided to us by “experts” but we never ask the crucial questions. That’s the problem.
Ed Barajas, Fayetteville, North Carolina
Return his license plate
To former U.S. Marine Shaun DeWaters: Bravo to you, jarhead. I am a former U.S. marine who served in Vietnam. I was a proud infidel in 1966, and am still to this day.The state of Kentucky should give your “INFIDL” license plate back to you with apologies. Semper Fi.
Ed Ritcherson, Gainesville, Florida
Wrong way, America
Regarding a recent letter to the editor: Democrats hate President Donald Trump so much that they lay the blame for everything in the world at his feet. Everything is his fault. Now, the letter writer has blamed the moral compass of Evangelical Christians on Trump.
Wake up, America! If you want to really see what’s happening to this country, look to these younger generations who have been raised with no morals at all. Covered in tattoos, piercings all over their bodies, hate toward anything that has to do with religion or normalcy of any kind. They don’t want to work but they have plenty of time to play on their phones and protest in the streets. You want to see where our country is going? Listen to rap music, take a stroll on Tik Tok and listen to the language of our young people.
The music we allow is beyond me. Especially when I remember when the song “Louie Louie” was banned in the radio, without one curse word, because it “sounded” suggestive when it had absolutely nothing to do with sex.
You’re right, America, we’re going down the wrong path, but it’s not the path Trump is taking us down. It’s the one that’s coming.
William Condra, Lexington
Marijuana solution, not problem
An October Herald-Leader article speaks of how marijuana farming could potentially be harmful to our environment. However, there is no scientific proof specifically stating that marijuana farms would hurt the environment.
Farming, in general, is harmful to the environment due to the use of machinery, fertilizer, land, and water. According to research done at Pace Law School, large-scale farms can use up to a million tons of fertilizer a day, which emits harmful gases into our atmosphere.
That being said, marijuana farms, like other farms, probably do hurt the environment to a degree. However, the benefits of this crop could tip the balance in its favor.
Cannabis and its counterparts have many versatile uses. Medical marijuana has been known to help cancer patients and people with Tourette’s syndrome. The plant can also be used to create products such as rope, oil, and even things like clothing or shoes. It can also cause economic growth because of how new and upcoming the market is.
Marijuana should not be looked at as a problem to be solved. It should be looked at as a solution to the future.
Briann Smith, Somerset
Writing about himself
In a recent letter to the editor, the writer said that “lesser-educated populations of states like Kentucky and Tennessee favor (President Donald) Trump”.
I wonder if the writer realizes that his town of Georgetown, Kentucky, is in the state of Kentucky and he himself belongs to his so-called “lesser-educated populations.”
Arlene Vecchio, Paris