By Jerry Riley

On these cold weekends I’m home in front of the TV a lot. I’ve been watching many Cold Case and Mystery Detectives and most end up with a sentence of life or mult-life, in prison with no chance of parole. I wonder who actually is being punished? The person sentenced will spend their life in reasonable comfort, and who pays for this? We, the taxpayers do! We not only pay all their living expenses, but we also pay for the people to guard them.

Recent Federal guidelines advise, in addition to basic human rights of food, heat, medical attention, and shelter, we have to provide air conditioning, inside and outside exercise and cable television. Many prisons have had to add geriatrics units to their medical services, turning our prisons into rest homes for the elderly.

We have to do something about this. I don’t know what. For years, state by state, the death penalty has been abolished, Maybe rightly so, but does the only alternative come at massive taxpayer expense? Should we overhaul the penal system, or does the whole criminal justice infrastructure need our attention?

We may have to pay for extra security for a convicted murderer, simply because he us a former police officer and maybe be a target for, well, other convicted murderers.

I look at other movies like Escape from New York or Escape from L.A., where the government has turned megalopolises into prisons, and let the prisoners run things. Guarded by smaller numbers of guards, policing the perimeters. I think that might work; look at success we’ve had policing the borders with Mexico. Now, what a revoltin’ development this is!

Jerry Riley comments for the News Bulletin. He is a retired telecommunications supervisor.