Letter to the editor: County doing end run

To the editor:

I find the news articles about the plans of Douglas County officials to expand the jail to be almost opaque, but a few things have managed to become clear to me.

1. The powers that be in our county, while fully aware that barely seven months ago the voters strongly rejected new jail construction, are trying to make an “end run” around the clearly expressed view of the voters and enlarge the jail despite the outcome of the election.

2. The way they plan to do so is to simply move budgeted money around from one “pot” to another just as a street magician fools his audience into believing that a coin is under a certain pot after he has jiggled the pots around so that the coin is now underneath a different pot.

3. I therefore take issue with the spokesperson for the Sunset Alliance who was quoted in the Dec. 3 Journal-World as saying that “there’s nothing illegal or underhanded about it.” It may or not be illegal, but it sure as heck is underhanded!

What we should instead do is figure out why our local jail population is so large and what could be done to reduce it. Jail populations of other counties have been reduced, so why does the leadership of our supposedly “open-hearted” and “forward-thinking” county continue to incarcerate so many people and for such long periods of time?

Keeping fewer people in jail is the obvious logical solution to the jail overcrowding situation.

Jane Frydman,

Lawrence

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