Jail

There are a few interesting comments to an article about Sheriff Gusman's response to a proposed ordinance that would limit the size of a new jail.

But, as always, there are the wackjobs (the below is a response to another comment comparing the incarceration rate in New Orleans to the rates in "dictatorships"):

roymint January 28, 2011 at 12:22AM

"More than any Tunisian or Egytpian or Iranian dictator ever dared to arrest."
Yeah, Iran would chop their hand off - so go manage your crime family there. Here is a better question to ask - why do the majority of us that never get arrested struggle to keep our homes nice yet we have to pay for these thugs to get rebuilt concrete buildings every 20 years with free cable and a cell that is bigger than your office. If tents are good enough for our heros, are they good enough for criminals. We should have them in chain gangs repairing your streets and send $1 per hour to be split amongst the mother(s) of their children? And when they get out, they should be banned from your town, living in halfway communes north of Alexandria. Their friends could visit them and maybe then you could sleep at night. How much worse will this get before you fight crime?

And I am pretty sure that it is never okay to call an African American man, in this case the Sheriff, an "Uncle Tom" because you disagree with him:

sid2jay January 28, 2011 at 2:28AM

Typical uncle tom here his own race he locking up and showing the need to lock up more .the jails today are a new form of slavery ,its all about money and self destruction because they are not doing anything about the causes that people are going to jail .no prevention programs no recreation for the youth. it just a breeding game to lock up more and more.but the money is coming from us in the end .just look who pays for the incarceration of these inmates us and instead of finding out solutions to decrees our spending he wants to increase it by building more and more jails. does he have any programs to prevent the recurrences of inmates returning to jail or trade skill programs to teach inmates how to become productive citizens. i remember when we as kids coming up in new Orleans we had Pontchartrain beach,city park the lakefront things like that for the youth.to keep they're mind occupied now the lake stays closed the Pontchartrain beach is gone city park is a ghost town. Is this designed to be this way to destroy todays youth because if you open your eyes at this citys management thats just what they age doing.OPEN YOUR EYES PEOPLE.

And sometimes it is difficult for me to distinguish legitimate conservative viewpoints (that I disagree with) from racist and hateful generalizations about poor people and minorities (see the last sentence in the second to last paragraph):

oilybird January 28, 2011 at 6:29AM

Anyone wishing to document just how ignorant people in this area are need to go no further then the blogs on the TP.
For starters, the police are not more inclined to arrest working people over homeless because working people grease the system financially. This is just plain stupid.
To think that they would send out notice that the jail was low on inmates so they put the word out to get more? Wow, and they do it by using black helocopters with no markings and ultrasonic speakers that signal your brain without making loud sounds.
@ CITIZEN: Do the police focus on young males? I would agree with that, but percentage wise, how do they look as far as who is committing most of the crimes and what percentage of the population are they where the crimes are taking place. If there have been 5 drug related murders around Derbigny and Frenchman, would you feel better if the police arrested white kids around the college bars for public intoxication or even simple possession of narcotics (note: anyone with drugs should be arrested).
As far as investing in things other then jails, we have tried that and it has failed miserably, especially in N.O. We have millions invested in schools, after school programs, lunch and breakfast programs, head start, community centers (none of which I have seen built in any area other then low income, including city pools). Then you have your 1st checks for Johnny who is slow, public housing, WIC, food stamps, Charity hospital system and there are more.
What we should invest in is telling people who can't support what they have (multiple kids) is that we (tax payers) are no longer going to support what is no longer working and that is taxpayers carrying the burden of a class of people who have no drive, no work ethic, little morals and very little concern for the future of their children, because they think it is the gov't problem.
None of these billions of dollars in programs has done anything to change the crime problem in N.O. So I say, build the jails and at least keep them from society.