We’ve been hearing a lot lately about how Chicago's mayor and his imbecilic police chief have both been decrying the need for tougher gun laws, even sighting the need for mandatory minimum sentences for those who choose to commit gun violations. I guess they assume that adding even more punishment in a city possessing some of the toughest gun laws in the country will somehow cure what is a much bigger problem. Although, of late, we’ve heard the police chief of that fair city busy denying the fact that Chicago’s gun laws are as tough as has been reported. He says that those making such statements are using the rhetoric of gun advocates.
But be that as it may, it would seem that they would have other problems to rectify before seeking to put even more folks in jail. You see, both county and state lockups are already operating at full capacity. This past week, Mayor Rahm "Dead Fish" Emanuel called for even tougher gun laws and Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy says "gun offenders have to do significant jail time." However, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said he doesn't have enough jail cells to hold inmates, and there is not enough room in the state prison system either. So what is it exactly that Emanuel and McCarthy might have in mind here?
For sometime now the state of Illinois, arguably the most corrupt state in our union, has been busy instituting what must have been thought of as being a brilliant cost saving plan. This state, which been under the firm control of Democrats for some time, as actually been closing prisons in an effort to save money and reduce the $9 Billion it owes in unpaid bills. The natural result is that now the remaining prisons and jails are full with the no vacancy sign having now been turned on. "We are at capacity right now" Dart said. "The state prison system is beyond capacity. You talk to them right now, they haven't had a population like this in decades."
The Cook County jail is the largest in the country, but it's so crowded now that some inmates are living in a former cafeteria, and others are sleeping on the facility hospital's floor. "This should be a building that we should have empty right now at this time of the year," Dart said. "There should be no one in it. But because of our population explosion, this is full." If mandatory minimum sentences are passed for gun violations, the prison population would swell, but Dart says there is no place for the swell of inmates to go. And I doubt very much that we’d see Democrats develop the urge to start building anymore prisons.
"We can't have this irrational type of notion that there's magic jail cells all over the place that are all sitting there empty, " said Dart. "It's as if all of a sudden we just raise penalties and these people get shipped off to the moon or something." Sounds to me like the only sane one here would be Sheriff Dart. He’s definitely the only one making any sense, here. So if we assume that no prison’s are likely to be re-opened, or news ones will be built, because of cost, what’s the likely alternative to be? How many of those considered to be "not dangerous," or as having "paid their debt to society" will simply be put back on the street? Just askin.
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