Sentencing Spree Unlikely
A little spare jail space won’t trigger a sentencing spree by the courts, according to Superior Court Judge Paul Bastine.
Spokane County commissioners had worried that moving some prisoners from the county-city jail to the Geiger Corrections Center might prompt judges to fill any empty cells.
“As a practical matter,” said Bastine, “we don’t have an awful lot of discretion under the standard sentencing guidelines, so there’s not really a lot of opportunity for us as judges to go to the extreme end of filling a vacuum even if we knew that one existed.”
Since 20 percent of the crooks commit 80 percent of the crimes, Wayne Lythgoe of Colbert thinks it’s a “good trade” to pay the cost of confining those 20 percent.
“A fair percent of the criminals are small-time hoods, usually not extremely dangerous, that could be locked up in minimum-security prisons,” he says.
“There are lots of closed military bases that would make ideal minimum-security facilities with minimum expenses to convert to prisons.”
Eliminating 80 percent of crime would allow reductions in law enforcement of 50 percent or more, Lythgoe believes, but, “I wonder if law enforcement is really interested in doing away with their jobs?”
Water World
Cody Enzler of Spokane is a 19-year-old Jet Skier who doesn’t think county plans to ban such craft from free-flowing stretches of the Spokane River are fair. He plans to say so at an April 1 hearing.
Besides asserting that his rights should be on a par with those of fishermen and kayakers, Enzler ways he and his fellow enthusiasts seldom encounter the other groups and when they do the contacts aren’t hostile.
“We’ve only run into one (kayaker), at the Bowl and Pitcher, and he was really nice. He helped us carry our Jet Skis out of the water.”
As for disrupting wildlife habitat, Enzler says, “A lot of that part in the Valley toward stateline is industrialized. A vast wasteland almost.”
Show them the money
“The real reason for the demise of allegiance in the workplace is greed,” says James A. Nelson of Spokane.
Shareholders, CEOs, workers all want unrealistic portions of the “profit pie,” according to Nelson.
“This balance of mutual allegiance will not be restored until team attitude prevails over the what-about-me syndrome.”
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