Vigo County Prosecutor Race

Sent this to the paper before Ellis got into the race. Clicking on unproductive below will bring up an interesting book on the failure of government schools.

Ed


We are entering another election year, which is easily noticeable from your articles on the local (Terre Haute) prosecutor race. The candidates are addressing some form of fairness, which I believe means equitable sentences before we lock them up. But half of these prisoners are political prisoners. They have not harmed anyone.

These political prisoners are thrown into populations highly infected with tuberculosis, hepatitis C, and AIDS. Their care is questionable, and I have even heard of a local person going to county jail and not receiving his penicillin. It is one thing to kill the convicted; it is another to create a resistant form of disease to unleash on an innocent public. Overcrowding from our police state is creating an unintended biological WMD.

Informed juries may be part of the answer as was highlighted in a Life Extension Magazine article in August 2004. Education, which has become more than unproductive, can’t do much in the short term even if corrected.

For now we are at the mercy of our prosecutors. Some of these political prisoners go to work and take care of their families. They are treated the same as irresponsible violators. Certainly much of the problem is in our prisons, but we need prosecutors who care more about the public health and safety and less about the money and power game.