60 minutes: Cook County Jail and Sheriff Tom Dart

[RBP]

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[DemonGeminiX]

Ok. Assessment? :-k

[RBP]

Ok. Assessment? :-k

I have had contact with Nneka Jones Tapia. I'd love to work for her. If you want the long form criminalization-of-mental-health rant, I can go there. :lol:

Dart is one of the good guys in this whole debate about criminal justice reform. I do agree that his first loyalty should be to staff, but the staff that plays by the rules. The officers have an extremely difficult, dangerous job at times. They deserve respect and support.

The cash bail system is a joke and I agree that non-violent offenders should be given ROR or home detention. Why are we paying to house them and denying them the ability to take care of their families? They have not been convicted of anything. Add to that a grossly overloaded public defender system and it is just simply justice denied. A simple fix to that part... make pro bono criminal defense tax deductible.

[DemonGeminiX]

The mentally ill shouldn't be treated as criminals unless they can reasonably determine right from wrong and their illness doesn't prevent them from controlling their impulses. The mental health system in this nation is woefully inadequate, and unfortunately, there's no real clear solution to that particular problem.

[RBP]

The mentally ill shouldn't be treated as criminals unless they can reasonably determine right from wrong and their illness doesn't prevent them from controlling their impulses. The mental health system in this nation is woefully inadequate, and unfortunately, there's no real clear solution to that particular problem.

One way to handle that is to expand mental health courts. There is extensive diversion for drug-related offenses to drug courts already. The problem with only looking at the issue as capacity to know right from wrong is that there is a natural connection between mental health or homelessness or both and petty crime. It feeds on itself. You shut a clinic, a guy doesn't get treated, he is homeless, and steals a bottle of water - he knows what he did was wrong but he was thirsty. Should we handle him through an expensive jail system or give him the treatment and support he should have had in the first place?

There's this fucked up political mentality that rewards politicians for being both tough on crime and budget hawks. Hey now! If I cut mental health funding and get tougher on criminal justice, the voters will love me!! But you just criminalized mental health and the net cost to the state went up... it was cheaper to fund the mental health properly.