I’m excited that some of Decarcerate Monroe County’s ideas have become projected into the mainstream media, like this from a July 26 Herald Times op-ed:
Some of his numbers also should give pause to our criminal justice hierarchy. Why is it that while incarceration rates have gone up nationwideby 38 percent from 1994 to 2007, the rate here has gone up 53 percent? And why is it that fully 87 percent of the jail’s inmates haven’t been convictedof anything but are simply awaiting trial?