???The wonderfully named Montague, Texas has made headlines in the last week through its unwitting operation of the kind of jail that would make Caligula proud.
???A 106-count indictment brought before a Texas grand jury last month against former sheriff Bill Keating and 16 others detailed numerous crimes committed over and over within the prison proper that ranged from trafficking and use of alcohol and other contraband substances to sex between jailers and prisoners and destruction of government property. The prison itself has undergone over $1 million of repairs following the exposure.
???However strangely amusing this story is two facts remain: that if the prisoners hadn't been so sated in their creature comforts that they did not desire to leave, the lackadaisical behavior of the guards would have gotten someone killed, and that the prison system in this country could use some work.
???This is not to say that we run the kind of institution Montague is now famous for nationwide, and it's also not to say that we run anywhere near the worst prisons in the world. But we spend more on prisons in this country than any other government program, excluding Medicaid. The average is just under $30,000 a year, per prisoner; shouldn't we be getting our money's worth?
???Be clear that what happened in Montague was the kind of fluke that allows us to witness brothels in foster homes or million dollar bonuses in times of financial crisis: a symptom, not the problem itself.
???The problem is that a certain percentage of people are animals and will take advantage of a situation, rape it really, if given half a chance. What we, the rest of the people in the world, need to do is stop giving them that chance. You want to live in a better world? Take responsibility for it.
???The prison system in this country is a joke, but it's the kind of complex run-on joke that stupid people claim makes sense so that they can avoid looking more stupid. The bottom line, however, is that we stick an enormous population of people who have committed an incredibly wide variety of crimes into a box together where all they have to do is learn from each other, and it costs us $30,000 a head.
???Sure, the problem could be alleviated by a justice system that didn't round up nonviolent offenders by the bushel and dump them in with murderers and rapists in order to fill quotas and look 'tough on crime,' but that's another editorial.
???Stripping prison spending and putting that money into prison education might help. If it's costing as much as the tuition to a low-end private school to keep them locked up, we might as well lock 'em in class. Then again some kind of work-farm might do the trick too. All we really know is that the 'concrete box, see-you-in-five-to-10' system doesn't work, so we should try something new.
???Prison reform is not a hot-button issue, though, and so it isn't likely that things will improve with any speed. Prison is the ultimate out of sight, out of mind equation, and a lot of people think that improving prisons coddles prisoners (The same people who think the joke makes sense, by the way). The best any of the rest of us can do is look for opportunities to help, stay vigilant, and hope that we don't find out someone's been running Thunderdome in the Gainesville Penitentiary.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
