Deciding to follow through with #JailClosings is a terrible concept. Closing one jail just means that the inmates will have to be transferred to other secure facilities. This drastically increases the level of crowding in other jails. And overcrowding makes pathogens spread much quicker, putting the lives of these inmates... and the staff who work in the facility... in danger. #Police are faced with a no-win scenario: endanger inmates' and employees' health by cramming more people into one of the other jails, or act in direct opposition to the public's best interests and release #criminals back onto the streets.
We have already seen how quickly diseases can spread in the general public, and this happens at a much faster rate when people are kept in close quarters. It is impossible to keep a safe distance from others when there is not enough space to do so. Overcrowded jails could easily lead to an outbreak of any number of infectious diseases, endangering the lives of the staff and inmates. It would also be a serious threat to the public at large, since corrections staff obviously do not live in the jail, they only work there.
The other alternative is letting more criminals out of jail, which is a very frightening proposition for the residents of our city. Just consider the case of Bill Gene Hobbs, who has been arrested multiple times on suspicion of stalking, groping, and kissing at least 13 different women and teenage girls against their will. He kept getting released, then he would be arrested for the same alleged crime. Should we really be taking the risk of letting people with serious and violent histories just slip out of jail and back into the society? These criminals constitute a menace to public safety, that's why they're locked up. Letting them walk free endangers the lives of others in the city.
It's also worth mentioning that it will soon be harder than ever to identify people who have already broken the law. The process for sealing criminal records is going to be easier, because Governor Gavin Newsom decided that would be a good idea. If they don't serve any time in jail, and there are no social consequences anymore either, isn't that essentially the same thing as letting people get away with committing criminal offenses, as increasing numbers do every year? What makes anyone think that they would hesitate to do the same thing again? People are creatures of habit and will keep the same patterns of behavior unless something happens to interrupt the cycle. That's what jail is supposed to be, an interruption of criminal behavioral patterns.
Overpopulating other jails is a threat to our health, letting convicts roam freely is a threat to our safety. The best thing is to keep them in jail until they have served their sentence, the way we have always done it in the past. The only time we should ever close a jail is after we have done the responsible thing and built its replacement.
