Sherry Chandler

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

“I’m not sure what to do at the moment,” [Kentucky Governor Steve] Beshear said. “Obviously, a great number of offenders who are in our jails and in our prisons right now are drug-related. … We all know for a fact that if there is an answer to the drug problem, it’s treatment and rehabilitation. But that costs money. And right now, we don’t have any.”

He’s talking about overcrowding in Kentucky’s county jails:

Kentucky’s 16 prisons are full. The Corrections Department has built only one in the last decade, even as its inmate population nearly doubled to 22,500 because of the war on drugs and tougher penalties for other crimes.

The state’s solution? Overcrowd the local jails.

Kentucky’s local jails — some old and crumbling, such as Lincoln County’s, which was built in 1941 Ð now house about 20,000 people, 10 percent beyond their capacity. Forty percent of those bodies are state inmates serving felony time. Nationally, only Louisiana squeezes a greater percentage of state inmates into jails.

This kind of stuff is what comes of viewing everything in terms of “war,” good guys and bad guys. We’ve now had several decades of having the prisons take over for social services, like drug rehabilitation programs and other forms of welfare.

Of having mandatory sentencing for draconian punishments.

For enforcing moral decisions by law.

Jailers estimate that more than half of their inmates got into trouble because of alcoholism or drug addiction. Yet a list of state-backed recovery programs identifies fewer than 400 treatment beds in 14 of the state’s jails. The prisons, with about 12,000 inmates, have nearly 1,000 treatment beds — still not enough, prison officials say, but a lot better than jails.

“I have a waiting list that looks like the New York phone directory,” said Jerry Brower, who runs the Kenton County jail’s 10-bed program.

Inmates who aren’t rehabilitated go on to commit more crimes later, [Robert] Lawson [criminal law professor at the University of Kentucky] said. Kentucky already suffers a high recidivism rate, with anywhere from one-fourth to one-third of state inmates returning to prison after just two years on the outside. Anything that makes rehabilitation even less likely is a terrible mistake, he said.

…

“We’ve been fighting an intensive war on drugs for more than 30 years, and I swear to God, the drug problem seems about as bad today as it ever has,” Lawson said.
…

“Nobody’s willing to change the laws because everybody wants zero tolerance on everything,” said Kenton County jailer Terry Carl said. “But there’s something going to have to give. The jails can’t handle much more.”

And speaking of the social consequence of war,

Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”

Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

As to the poetical Character itself …it is not itself—it has not self—it is everything and nothing—It has no character—it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated—It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion poet…

— John Keats, October 27, 1818

(Where I’m not sure. I found this quote in my journal/notebook for Memorial Day, 2000)