Imates running the Asylum

Living in a community who's economy is driven by one of the largest, most secure prisons in California (Pelican Bay State Prison, a SuperMax facility), this article jumped out and slapped me in the face.  That CDCR bureaucrats have the audacity to request $8 billion to provide a "holistic environment" for health care for inmates just makes me livid. 

His Receivership [Clark Kelso] wants to spend $8 billion to build seven new
hospitals, each the size of 10 Wal-Marts, which would create "a
holistic environment," with "music therapy, art therapy and other
recreation therapy functions," a music room, stress-reduction room,
game room and "therapy kitchen," with lots of natural light and high
ceilings. A gymnasium would feature a "full-size high school playing
court with basketball hoops and built-in edge seating up to four rows
deep. Various floor striping allows for other games, such as
volleyball, etc. Other sport activities include handball courts,
exercise, and (a) workout room."

I almost choked on my own tongue when I read these figures:

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation estimates
the annual cost of operating these facilities to be between $170,000
and $230,000 per inmate.

and...

In the meantime, health care spending per inmate rose from $7,601 per
inmate in 2005-06 to $13,778 per inmate in 2007-08 -- an 81 percent
increase and far above the average of $4,600 spent on health care per
Californian.

On top of that...

Henderson's [US District Court Judge Thelton E. Henderson] remedies, however, have had their problems, as well.
The first receiver, Robert Sillen, once threatened to "back up the
Brinks truck" to the state's treasury to bankroll better inmate care --
and he clearly meant it. Sillen was paid $775,790 in the 15 months,
ending in June 2007. An audit found no fraud, but it found that Sillen
authorized $218,790 in overpayments to staff members for such benefits
as health insurance and retirement that they already had received.

Henderson fired Sillen and then hired Kelso, who set his own
annual salary at $224,000 -- plus a possible bonus. The
Schwarzenegger-Brown motion complains that Kelso's "large staff and $74
million in administrative expenses" are duplicative and amount to a
full-scale takeover of the state prison health care system.

Talk about government corruption & pork!

For a little perspective, California AG Jerry Brown has this to say:

California is spending "almost three times what the federal government
is spending, more than two times what the average Californian gets.
When is enough enough?"

And this as the state still does not have an operating budget.  We average Californians (it is still with some pain that I call myself that) are looking at receiving IOU's instead of cash for tax reimbursements.  At least that's the scuttlebut that we're hearing.  I know a lot of Correctional Officer's (CO's) who are looking at taking pay cuts and also possibly facing receiving IOU's instead of paychecks.  Don't laugh...that's actually happened before.

I know the rank and file doesn't agree with this kind of spending.  They have to deal with it every day, walking a fine line between high-risk prisoners who know how to play the system like a Stradivarius and the moral imperitive to penalize these men for the crimes they've commited against society.  CO's watch as these men receive better care than they can afford for their own families.  And then the pointy-headed intellectual management descend from their ivory-towers and dictate that "these people are not animals" and decide they need to spend even more money on them.

Here's an idea: how about we figure out how to continue to pay our CO's for the thankless job of putting up with this scum instead of building the scum seven new 1,020,000 square foot hospitals (equivialent to 10x the average Wal-Mart store)...how about that, hmmm?

theMK