PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW Editorial: …Roy Pinto, president of the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association, tells The Patriot-News of Harrisburg that the only way to reduce the prison population by a projection of more than 2,500 inmates next year, under a state budget that provides no increase for Corrections, is to “cut people loose that shouldn’t be cut loose.”
Except the state’s Corrections secretary, John Wetzel, has said nothing about changing the criteria for parole. Moreover, the state Parole Board doesn’t make decisions based on prison populations.
One solution — reduce the long lag time between when an inmate is granted parole and when that person is released. Mr. Wetzel says it can take 100 days or longer for a parolee to get out of prison — at $90 a day for three hots and a cot….(more)
EDITOR: Just as we have a ‘Military Industrial’ complex, we have a ‘Criminal Justice industry’. Both distort national policy to enrich its members. The latter case includes police and prosecutors, prison guards, and probationary officers. Rather than being about justice, it is too often about jobs.
The prime examples of distorted special law enforcement interests distorting national policy is the reactionary War on Drugs.
