Jails: A Crisis In The Counties

Jails: A Crisis In The Counties

MARK MAYNARD: And the winner is... well, stay tuned
Anybody else find it amusing that LeBron James needs an hour-long special on ESPN to let the world know who wins the King James Free Agent Sweepstakes?

July 7, 2010
Budget committee addresses prisons, passes budget and cigarette tax Some of them were “squirming in their seats,” but 20 members of the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee chose higher cigarette taxes and sales taxes on some services over “devastating” cuts to education and health and human services Tuesday.
March 12, 2008 1 Photo 2 Links
Senate Judiciary wants lawmakers to review penal code A subcommittee of the General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary would review Kentucky’s penal code with an eye to lowering prison and jail populations – but it wouldn’t have to report its findings until July 1, 2011.
February 21, 2008 1 Photo
Graham will file bill to help counties with jails Vince Lang shakes his head, smiling wryly about his timing. At the very time state lawmakers have shown understanding of counties’ financial difficulties in operating county jails, the state faces a major financial crunch.
January 26, 2008 1 Photo
Drug court viewed as incarceration alternative With county jails across the state bursting at the seams, alternatives to incarceration are getting some attention. Drug court, an intensive rehabilitative program, is one such alternative.
January 23, 2008 1 Photo 2 Links
‘Life is good today,’ says former drug court participant In the grip of the drugs she was abusing, Shannon Byrd said she hit rock bottom when she lost custody of her 15-month-old son, Mason.

“Looking back at it today, I wasn’t a very good mother,” said the petite 29-year-old blonde. She lost temporary custody to her parents while strung out on methamphetamine.
January 23, 2008 1 Photo
Keeping jails operational from jailer’s perspective Jim Womack knows exactly what the jailer’s office looked like when the Greenup County Detention Center opened in 1990. He walks across the same carpet and sits at the same desk today as county jailer.
January 23, 2008 1 Photo
Task for lawmakers: Finding right solutions Everyone agrees county jails are a major and growing problem, depleting county budgets and straining to house the exploding number of inmates.
January 21, 2008 4 Photos 1 Link
Options laid out in two jail studies There’ve been two studies of how Kentucky funds and manages its county jails in the past two years — a comprehensive audit of all of Kentucky’s jails by state Auditor Crit Luallen in 2006 and a study commissioned by the Department of Corrections which was released by the Pacific Center for Research and Evaluation, the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky in December, commonly called the “U of L study”.
January 21, 2008
Public wanted ‘get tough’ laws and inmate numbers soared Elizabeth Hunter “never thought I was pretty enough, smart enough, or witty enough.” Still, the 41-year-old mother of two young children earned two college degrees, one in electrical engineering and another in computer engineering.

January 21, 2008 1 Photo
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