The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has been investigating conditions at Miami Dade County jails for 3 1/2 years. Their findings have been released. Here is the kicker: The County Commission knew about the investigation because they got a memo from Carlos Alvarez on April 4, 2008. Still the Feds found all these problems. They say "a majority of the findings relate to the medical and mental health services provided by Jackson Memorial Hospital's Corrections Health Services." Read the Memo above. For a more in depth look at the findings, use the link also above.
You all realize this is going to cost the County a bundle to fix. If the County doesn't fix things, Mayor Gimenez says "the U.S. Attorney General is authorized to initiate a federal lawsuit."
The feds detail 8 suicides that they say illustrate "The harm resulting from MDCR's (Miami Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitative Department) failure to take reasonable preventative measures." They say further that:
"MDCR is deliberately indifferent to prisoners' suicide risks and serious mental health needs."
That is harsh language. Can you imagine what they would have found had the jails NOT known there was an investigation going on?
5 comments:
8 BIG lawsuits - negligence on the part of the county and the Federal government is the witness. I'll take the case.
I have just completed reading the entire memo. I am disgusted by this....it is like something out of a Jack Nicholson movie... Horrible.
And the people who work there? They have to be the most uneducated and maybe even evil people I have ever witnessed as county employees. They need to be booted out of their jobs.
Make it fail, then privatize. Do nothing, and get your buddies in line to take it over.
I recommend watching the documentary shot in the County Main Jail shown on the National Geographic channel before you call the employees that work in the corrections system uneducated/evil. They deal with a criminal element that has no problem hurting guards or each other. Both guards and wards have to deal with intense psychological and physical stress.
The problem in our corrections system is the problem we're going to face shortly with our schools, roads, bridges, and other infrastructure- aging structures with no plan/money to replace or fix them. Who in these lean economic times is going to recommend pumping in millions of dollars to fix a corrections system? (Only if we’re forced to by the Justice department
One bright spot is the boot camp program the Corrections department runs- it's nationally recognized and the recidivism rates for people that go through the program are low. The goal of the corrections department is rehabilitation and boot camp accomplishes this. Wayward young men become law abiding citizens when they leave the program. Unfortunately, this program is slated to be cut in the mayor's budget.
You have to be on the inside to know that the corrections dept has a nonprofessional attitude in dealing with even the police officers... Perhaps that arises out of lack of management and retraining and even poor working conditions ....
Years ago there was an issue with getting the officers back on the road. That hasn't changed. The po get stuck in the processing area.There are times that the intake specialists will be sitting around shooting the bull while po sit with arrestees in a holding area. This results in a backlog of arrestees and po's off the road with calls holding.
The jails are dirty and not maintained. The 9 area is not much different from the rest of it.
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