Local jails are packed. For minor offenses in my county, you currently have to wait 6-9 months to even serve your term. There is no room. As it stands now, if you have more than a year’s sentence, you get sent to state prison. They want to change that to three years. But local jails are already full to the brim and we can’t expand them because there is no money to build or staff them.
Sending back prisoners early to reoffend and requiring local jails to hold prisoners longer will just end up with people not serving their sentences and being released on the street. I don’t see any other way it could end up with the jail capacity and budget the way it is.
Exactly, and the “offenses” that can land one in a local jail are not things such as armed robbery or rape or what have you.
Typically they are traffic offenses..and not neccessarily DUI’s.
Imho, this is one thing the Libertarian Party has mostly right.