On jails, enlightenment and financial reality

One of the arguments we heard against the new jail here had to do with the concept of jail itself.

There will always be some people who have to be separated from normal society. But America has a relatively large portion of its citizens locked up.

This fact is getting greater scrutiny.

Simply locking so many people up, people of disparate backgrounds and levels of wrongdoing, may be judged unreasonable. The cost ($) may expedite this process.

The feared cost of a Stevens County jail raised ire in great many people.

Small towns occasionally have controversies like this. They are unfortunate because they leave scars.

The jail skeptics won. Along the way they constructed some quite elaborate and well thought out arguments.

My, they got philosophical. They talked about the purposes of jail and whether they were all well-grounded.

An example: Couldn't more non-violent offenders simply be referred for mental health attention?

So, the problem of jail or prisons is that it's too much of a one-size-fits-all principle.

Maybe prisoners who aren't dangerous in a back alley don't require the same confinement as ones who are.

Would Bernie Madoff scare you in a back alley?

Prisons are meant to protect society. Simply locking people up as punishment is going to come under greater scrutiny as we gain more knowledge about mental health disorders and especially as we look at the cost.

Stevens County went through a horrible episode of weighing a new jail. Vociferous elements of the public rose up.

I'm not sure what spell certain county commissioners came under to think this facility was a good idea. It seemed like the whole cacophony was against the jail.

A prominent Morris individual did inform me, though, that the jail had its backers around town. Their argument?

"We have to keep building Morris," the individual told me (in a church basement setting).

We need to reflect on that statement. Do we really want growth if it's just spurred by government?

Do we want growth if it's in the form of a jail which has no redeeming good qualities? Do we want growth even if it's depressing?

So, all growth is not good growth.

Jail opponents put in writing their skepticism in a prescient way. Will we find better means of dealing with non-violent offenders than "locking them up?"

Much has been said about how the "war on drugs" is bleeding us. We need to listen to the libertarians who argue that drug laws need to be loosened.

I read recently there is one state that is doing this simply because minor drug offenses were clogging their court system.

Where did this onerous punishment come from? Is this just more of the legacy of the '60s and early '70s, i.e. the culture war of that time, when youth decided drug use might be part of their badge of rebellion? Like wearing blue jeans to school?

It's time to knock it off. The war on drugs has ended up like the war on poverty.

Certainly drug use can be discouraged by means other than onerous jail time. Lumping all sorts of prisoners together reminds me of the old large mental health institutions like the one in Fergus Falls.

We gained more insights into mental health. People began getting treated for their special conditions. They were segregated off in much the same way prison inmates could be.

The "worst of the worst," i.e. sociopaths could stay locked up in the stereotypical prison situation.

People who are dumb or who have screwed up or for whom life has given them no advantages could be guided along a different path.

In the meantime the jail opponents have won in Morris.

Certainly we all had to feel some skepticism about the proposal. Stevens County is such a placid place, thank God.

Surely these inmates would be coming from other places to a degree, and why? Why should it become our responsibility?

I look at the new courthouse and wonder whether the substantial renovation was even necessary. I thought the old courthouse was attractive.

We are approaching a time when the revamping of government at all levels is going to happen. These pressures were one reason why state government shut down.

The pressures for change are going to meet stiff resistance in the form of advocates of the status quo. The shutdown ended up accomplishing nothing in terms of pushing us toward that change. Too many oxes would get gored. The status quo won for now.

The forces of change are going to be inexorable.

The reason: disruptive technology.

It is a joke for Minnesota to have so many counties and for auditors to be sprinkled all over the place.

Yes we are seeing some consolidation. But the fundamental changes haven't pushed through yet.

The forces of change are evident in subtle ways around us. A friend told me a while back that the reason why Morris churches are struggling with attendance is that the younger generation of adults doesn't find it necessary to go to "a building" to affirm their faith.

The bricks and mortar element of government is going to be reduced.

I have written several times on this site that higher education is dealing with the same kind of tremor. It isn't necessary to go to a "campus" to learn. It seems elementary really.

But the youth get the idea. As they get older and gain power, their values will get instilled in our collective systems.

Eventually state government and state institutions will be redesigned. It's just that we're not quite ready yet.

It's too unsettling for many of us. It can seem scary.

My boomer generation promoted values that seemed scary to many of the older folk. "Make love not war."

It seems elementary now. The U.S. still engages in foreign conflicts but there is no draft. It's more like police actions (nation building?) and certainly not like the grand war of attrition in Viet Nam.

What do we way to those who say "we need to keeping building Morris?"

I'd say maybe we should be thankful we're just a small, quiet rural community.

I'd say the new jail could in no way compensate for some of the retrenchment we've seen in our local business community.

We have other needs like tearing down the old school. What in God's name is delaying that? Funds for that should have been included in the new school referendum.
Surely we're going to do it at some point. The sooner the better.

What happened to the "green community" that was going to be developed on the old school property? I'm told it "lacks investors." In other words, there's no economic impetus for expansion of Morris.

So those who feel "we have to keep building Morris" are going to have to sit on their hands longer.

A big new jail wouldn't have helped one speck. It would have been a curiosity, a nuisance and a financial drain, but nothing good would come of it.

The county jail building boom in Minnesota has been judged a big white elephant. It has been judged a "prison industrial complex."

Financial austerity is causing a new hard look. Jails and prisons may go the way of that mental health facility in Fergus Falls.

We will fine-tune corrections. The specter of jail won't be what it once was.

Society will find a gentler way to deal with people who wouldn't scare you in a back alley. And Morris will be just fine without a big new jail.

Now let's get the Coborn's building occupied.

- Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com