On crime and prisons

There is not enough money to house prisoners. There is no money to build more prisons. There is all kinds of bad news for our law enforcement agencies.

How about this for a solution? Quit locking up folks just because we are mad at them. The only people who should be in prison are the ones that society needs protection from. Crimes that do not involve violence ought to be dealt with differently than those that involve violence.

Put non-violent offenders in halfway houses. Let them work and pay room and board along with their fines and penalties. If they continue to break the law, then we might consider keeping them from society by locking them up. I think that most folks who commit nonviolent crimes would settle down, work, pay their room and board and we, the taxpayers, would be saving a very large amount of money while the offenders would suffer punishment for their crimes.

We would be spared hearing about how this or that person needs to go to prison for 400 years or so because they wrote a bunch of bad checks, fell behind on their child support or shoplifted.

Skip McQuaid
Geneva