Published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette (Northampton, MA) April 27, 2006<\/p>\n
To the editor:\n<\/p>\n
\nHampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe says his new women’s jail will be full
\nwhen it opens next year, so he wants another $6 million to add 56 more
\ncells. Our local leaders should say no. The new women’s jail will hold women
\nfrom all four counties of western Massachusetts.\n<\/p>\n
\nBuilding bigger jail after bigger jail is not the solution to crime and it
\nmight even make things worse. Adding extra capacity to a jail should be a
\nlast resort, because those empty cells will reduce the pressure for judges
\nand legislators to consider cost-effective and rehabilitative alternative
\nsentences for people who pose no threat to the community.\n<\/p>\n
Rather than build now, the prudent thing to do is to force Sheriff Ashe to
\n”make do” for a few years with the 240 cells already under construction.\n<\/p>\n
Before lawmakers grant Ashe’s request, they should remember that 56 cells
\nwill cost $2.4 million a year to operate. That money will no longer be
\navailable to fund schools, drug treatment or other far more beneficial
\nprograms.\n<\/p>\n
Bringing more state investment to western Massachusetts is a good goal, but
\ndumping it into jails is the last thing we can afford.\n<\/p>\n
Peter Wagner
\nNorthampton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Letter to the editor in the Hampshire Gazette by Peter Wagner arguing against a $6 million expansion to the Hampden County women’s jail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[11],"class_list":["post-1120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10257,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1120\/revisions\/10257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1120"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}