Alabama Sheriff Legally Took $750,000 Meant To Feed Inmates
npr.org
npr.org
Qualls, who had never been arrested before, faces six charges and is being held on a $55,000 bond, Sheets reports. He is detained in a jail that Entrekin oversees."
Can we do a cost benefit analysis on Alabama and see if we are in any from profiting from preventing them from seceding?
It would be a strategic blunder to let Alabama secede, also as much as HN loves to hate the south, Alabama has over 33% African American population, that has to be kept in mind.
The world is not static, before jerking off and spewing words like secession a deep breath and a mindful analysis helps.
Did anyone bring up race here? I don't see how a comment about race is relevant towards discussion of corrupt government.
Only benefit at this point is geopolitical stability.
Something being ethically bad is insufficient to rule it out. The degree of the ethical failure matters, as does the purpose of the action.
This will inevitably be read to imply I'm advocating Torture which I am not. I'm merely pointing out that binary ethical/unethical is insufficient.
Oftentimes in the US it is less about a busy defense attourney and more about the prosecution offering a plea deal to skip trial. I can't say with any certainty why this is done but I believe it's due to overcrowding in courts and jails.
Many attourneys will suggest the defendant accept the plea deal because it's a sure thing. It's a lighter sentence than if the defendant went to court and when a case goes to court -- especially a jury trial -- it is impossible to say how it will turn out and it could end up far worse for the defendant when compared to the plea deal.
"In 2009, then-Sheriff Greg Bartlett of Morgan County was briefly tossed in jail after acknowledging that he had personally profited, to the tune of $212,000, from a surplus in the jail-food account. Prisoners testified about receiving meager meals."
Still, I don't see the justification for the use of the word "starvation" in that context, either.
I do agree with you, though, that the author shouldn't have used the word.
Many jails/prisons are spending no more than 50 cents or so per meal, and providing only two meals per day.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/07/07/what-s-in-a-pr...
Inmates that have some support system supplement with commissary purchases.
So it's a transfer of what should be government spending to spending by inmate families. The benefit seems to flow to the companies that run the commissary programs.
It's a doublet. These are in general very common in laws, though this particular one doesn't appear to be.
How on earth is it possible for taxpayer money to legally end up in an official's pocket?
What probably happened was people abused the law as way of giving the sheriff a raise without actually giving him a raise.
There is a section that says that yes, the sheriff has the duty to feed the prisoners. There is a section that dictates the amount per capita. There is a brief section on supervision (14-6-41 -- the Board of Corrections and county commission in theory should supervise the feeding).
There is no section that I see so far that says the sheriff is supposed to pocket the change. There is, however, a section in 14-6-41 dictating that the sheriff doesn't have to create a daily record of food, though. So there's no audit trail.
Basically, it's a system that is very loose, the state gives the sheriff money, and that's it. Thus if the Board of Corrections and county commission "look the other way" on this sort of setup, the sheriff could easily pocket "cost savings". Alabama is not exactly known for its lack of corruption in government, so this story doesn't surprise me.
(Added pet peeve note: I really dislike media articles that reference "the law" without even providing a fleeting reference to what "the law" is. It's possible I missed a statute that more toes to the NPR story, but NPR sure isn't helping me look up what they are talking about with that article.)
I mean in the story this sheriff had to take out $150,000 loan because when the last sheriff died his estate got to keep the budget. The new sheriff probably didn't mind all that much, because he knew long term he could pay that loan off and make hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars if he could hold on to the office long term.
The most common advice I’ve received is to go pass the bar or become a cop. I know “good” people who did this...I no longer consider them good people. The system got to them.
That's hardly "starving".
This article title is sensational and should be changed. It serves no one to misrepresent the truth, especially in a world dominated by hyperbole and sensationalism.
Edit: Those downvoting me, what about my statement do you disagree with?
Does that ever happen? What could cause it to happen? Could the state not just say, "we're reducing your budget by 750k this year, make up the shortfall Mr Sheriff." and he'll have to cough up?
When Entrekin's predecessor died while still in office, all the money in the food provision account went to his estate — as state law dictated, a county official told NPR. Entrekin had to borrow $150,000 to keep the inmates fed. He was paying down that debt for years, The Gadsden Times reported.
In 2009, while he was still in debt from paying for inmates' food, Entrekin told the Times that he personally thought the law needed to be changed. But he noted that it might cost more money for taxpayers if the county commission had to manage jail kitchens through an open bid process.
David Akins, the chief administrative officer of the Etowah County Commission, agrees with that assessment. He says the commission is not eager to take on that duty, as some other local governments have done.
"The sheriff can feed inmates cheaper than the county can," he said.
Please do read to the end of the article. It has happened, with this same sheriff.
throw in pension abuse and you would be amazed at the dollars lost to all of this, dollars easily better used for other purposes
It's true you should consider the source but, there are probably better ways to do this.
By and large, a tiny fraction of civil servants steal from official accounts. This case is a strange consequence of the rather peculiar legal standing of the sheriff’s office, in one particularly backward US state.
Prior to retiring from the police, he was paid $15k to $35k annually over the course of 20 years (I adjusted for inflation, so those are 2018 dollars).
Sometimes "pension abuse" is "getting a fair salary after I've left the job" (not always of course).