Driving while Brown 0
Earlier this week, I linked to a Chicago Tribune story police in McHenry County, Illinois, falsely classify Hispanic drivers stopped for traffic violations are “white”; the implication was that this was done to avoid charges of profiling.
Today the Tribune has more. A nugget:
There is another twist to this story. McHenry houses one of two county jails in Illinois under contract with the federal government to hold immigrant detainees, at a rate of $85 a night. Up to 300 detainees, most from other counties, are housed nightly in the McHenry jail, and the federal contract is worth some $$10.5 million a year to the county. Hispanics arrested in McHenry for a traffic violation and who are subsequently held in jail as immigration detainees have become an important source of income for the sheriff’s office.
Interesting. From traffic to trafficking.
Taking the profit motive out of incarceration is essential.
The impetus for incarceration really should not be based on a balance sheet.
The agency–state, federal, or local–that imprisons someone should be directly responsible for providing and paying for the imprisonment, without involving third parties; criminal justice is a function of government, not an engine of economic growth.
We have seen what putting profit first does to justice.
