 Jennifer HemmingsenI'm an op-ed columnist and member of The Gazette's editorial board, writing primarily about Iowa politics, social issues, public safety [...] |
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Justice Center flip-flop is a good thing
A rendering looking northwest shows a draft design for a proposed criminal justice center in Johnson County. The facility would include a new jail and court space, built behind the existing courthouse. The county has placed a bond issue on the November ballot to pay for the center. (Neumann Monson Architects)
People can be reluctant to tax themselves for something big and expensive, like a jail, if they don’t see any benefits for themselves.
But Iowa City’s justice center opposition has included a faction with a different objection: They don’t want the county to put so many people in jail in the first place.
Maybe it’s because of the city’s heritage (See: Iowa City, People’s Republic of). Maybe it’s because our police arrest more than a city’s average share of young drunks (See University of Iowa, Parties).
The county’s jail and courthouse facilities are woeful. About 100 inmates are crammed into a jail space designed for half that many bodies; dozens more are shipped out daily to facilities in nearby counties.
The 100-plus-year-old courthouse has too few courtrooms, little meeting and storage space, and lacks modern security.
It’s up to voters to approve the $46.8 million bond issue that would greenlight construction of a 153,800-square-foot justice center that would address all those inadequacies.
Still, a number of folks here have long opposed building a new justice center because they think it only encourages a system that already puts too many people behind bars, and which disproportionately punishes poor folks and people of color.
Their ideological objections had the very real effect of helping to tank the last jail referendum more than a decade ago. Officials aren’t taking any chances this time, holding forums and offering tours of current facilities to help voters understand the need.
It seems they’ve changed at least one mind: Respected blogger and super-lefty John Deeth did an about-face on the issue just over a week ago, making what he called the “biggest liberal flip-flop since Birkenstocks were invented” — urging his fellow former “no” voters to do the same.
Voting against the justice center means endangering improvements that will protect the rights of inmates to consult with attorneys in private, to visit with family and friends, to take part in programming and to have their day in court, he writes. It will help ensure the safety of jurors, victims, witnesses, the public and even the accused. He’s right.
Deeth’s change of heart could help give the justice center referendum the push it needs to pass this time — let’s hope it does.
The principled stance of symbolic “no” voters might cost those voters very little. But, as Deeth came to realize, it is county employees and jail inmates, as well as citizens who would access the courts, who will pay the price.
Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net
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The referendum should be opposed. Voters in Johnson County should never reward a policy that results in a jail population that is often 40% persons of color in a county that’s at least 90% white. Deeth never once mentions race (and, of course, neither does Hemmingsen in this parrot-piece) in his endorsement of the jail–and for good reason. This jail is too big, too expensive (and likely to get more expensive adding to the competition for construction labor in Iowa City with all the UI projects going on), in the wrong place, and largely a machine politics jails as jobs program for the County Democratic Machine.
In a nutshell Black inmates of both genders are held longer than White inmates. 85% of those booked that are under the age of 25 are released within 24 hours and most of them are White so for the inmates held longer than a week the percentage of Blacks is almost twice the percentage that enter about 17% to 21% depending on fiscal year. Another reason for the increase is management of risks to public safety and flight to avoid prosecution.
The question we need to answer is why are Blacks held longer than Whites?
I think has more to do with the war against poor people than race.
Your numbers seem to lack the types of crimes committed. Wouldn’t that be a better function of determining how long someone should stay in jail vs the color of their skin?
Hey, Don: Please update your account to include your last name (as per our terms of service).
I actually do mention that race is a big part of some people’s objection to the justice center (“Still, a number of folks here have long opposed building a new justice center because they think it only encourages a system that already puts too many people behind bars, and which disproportionately punishes poor folks and people of color.”). I have always disagreed that forcing inmates to stay in a substandard and potentially unsafe facility, or shipping them far away from attorneys and support networks, doesn’t address the problem of disproportionate incarceration.
I’m not saying the problem isn’t real. We do put too many people behind bars, and racial disparities are troubling, to say the least. But the bottom line is the county has to house the people arrested by police and ordered there by the courts. The jail vote is, as I say in the column, the wrong place to take a stand on those issues.
Jennifer Hemmington,
I wish it were possible for liberal opponents to spend a couple of days in the Johnson County Jail. Maybe they could arrange to get themselves arrested on some petty charge and then be forced to spend a couple three days or so just to get an idea what the conditions are like.
The jail does not create inmates. Mandatory sentencing creates inmates.The best the county attorney can do is plea bargain.
Instead of wasting their energy on opposing a much needed justice center, maybe Iowa City liberal opponents could do the victims of our crazy justice system the favor of making life better for these people. How about for starters setting up some sort of volunteer service help people make bail. Do these liberals know that inmates cannot access their own bank accounts? Do they understand that for too many people, contacting someone on the outside is virtually impossible? I had a conversation with a university student who was trapped in the jail for four or five days because her parents were on vacation, she couldn’t get ahold of them, the phone system is collect calls only and won’t identfy who is calling and can’t leave a voicemail. There is no excuse for what happened to this child. None
Good for John Deeth.
If Johnson County treated the dogs and cats in its shelter as badly as it treats human beings in its jail, all the Liberal “no” voters would be running around with their collective hair on fire.
I can understand conservative “no” voters. They like punishing people which means that maintaining a jail so small, overcrowded, and inadequate that it is verging on a law suit based on Amendment VIII is at least consistent with their basic values. But liberals?
The arguments being used today, at least on the conservative side, are the same arguments used 40 years ago the last time Johnson County updated its jail. Prior to 1980, people were housed in run down limestone block buildings that pre-dated the Court House. Two of those buildings are still standing and are used for storage. By the 1970s these buildings were clearly not fit to house human beings.
On the liberal side? I don’t get it. Surely a recent incident where a violent prisoner was shoved into a cell with other people because there was no place to put him should have given anyone with still functiooning brain cells pause.