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A Tale of Two Prison Staffing Shortages · Kvetch & Release

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  A tale of two prison staffing shortages. Looking across the river to Michigan.
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  Right now, a union representing Michigan corrections officers have asked the governor to activate
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  the National Guard to address staffing shortages that have led to dangerous working conditions in
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  the state's prisons. Meanwhile, here in Ontario, according to CBC, hundreds
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  of pages of documents written by experts for two class action lawsuits are painting a
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  picture of our correction system is inhumane and poorly managed, and it specifically takes
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  aim at the use of lockdowns in our correctional facilities as a means to deal
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  with staffing shortages between the years of two thousand and nine to twenty seventeen.
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  Joining me right now to discuss is Bobby Russen, who is a lawyer in
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  criminal defense. How you doing, Bobby, I'm okay, John. How
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  are you hey? I'm doing well. Thanks. You know, I saw
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  both of these stories within like six hours of each other the other day,
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  and you know, you pop to mind, as usually happens when I think
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  about crime. Quite frankly, thanks for being my crime voice that I go
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  to. But it was interesting, how you know, the proximity that we
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  have and the difference of how we're dealing with it. What are your thoughts
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  just first off about here locally in Ontario, these uses of lockdowns for those
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  number of years, that's not acceptable. It's a Poland day. It's not
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  accessible. You know, Piven is supposed to be a deprivation of liberty.
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  It's not supposed to be an overwhelming punishment. Beyond that, the hope is
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  that we can reability before and you know that's especially true. It is like
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  our local jail, which is you know, not a reformatory. It's just
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  there for people who are awaiting or file or awaiting the resolution of their masks,
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  you know. And it's this type of stuff is a huge problem.
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  And you know, I know it is. It's so easy for people to
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  all answer, well, whatever they're in jail, you know, I just
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  I I encourage anyone to remember the quote that a threat to or sorry,
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  any justice anywhere, of a threat of justice everywhere. And you know,
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  when when you start turning a blind eye to human rights violations and prisons,
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  it's personal. Before you start turning up blind eyeing human right violations over where,
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  it's an extraordinary problem. And you know we've got a provincial government here
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  who is pumping more money into Crown attorneys and pumping more money into police and
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  saying, we realize we're overmatched here, but we're only going to address the
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  overmatched portion of making sure we punishing, not making sure we respect your rights.
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  And it's extraordinarily problematic in my view. So what is a lockdown like
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  for people that are inside the correctional facilities? Lots in a cell with one,
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  sometimes two other people, despite the cell only having rate for two total,
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  and you don't wait, you're you're in a concert box. Sometimes just
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  twenty two hours a day was very close to nothing to do. You know,
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  it's I don't want to be hyperbolics, it's torture, but it's it's
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  only one standard deviation away up and I think so obviously the answer is hire
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  more correctional officers, build more facilities to not have to deal with that.
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  I suppose the other side would be as well. When it comes to prosecutions.
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  You know, you could look at how that is being dealt with.
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  But now let's look to Michigan where the National where they're looking to ask the
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  National Guard to come in to the governor. The union representing correctional workers there.
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  What does that say to you? You know, it's, uh,
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  it's not an easy choice. It's it's a twenty too. So okay,
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  do we allow for lockdowns and inane treatment or do we continue our downward slopes
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  into the militarization of police. You know, that's two really really words.
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  I can't say on their options. You know, it's it's so unfortunate that
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  that's sort of coming to you. But you know, I think from the
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  union's perspective, they're you know, they're representing their guards themselves, and they
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  may not feel safe because they're outnumbered, right, So from their perspective,
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  of course they want the National Guard. But talking about a slippery slope on
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  lockdowns, and they give it right here, like that's a slippery slope here.
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  And you know, I know the National Guard is is not the Marine
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  Corps, but they are military, you know, and and military moving into
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  law enforcement not usually a sign of society that is going around, right.
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  You know, I'm reminded of the great line from Commander Adama on Battlestar Galactica.
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  There's a reason you separate the military and the police. One fights the
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  enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the
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  military becomes both the enemies of the state tend to become the people. So,
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  yeah, that's right. I would agree with you on that. So
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  I guess if you know, if let's say you were the premier and you
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  had a majority government and you were in charge, which is never going to
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  happen quite frankly, Bobby, But if it did happen, what would be
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  your fix for this? So if I was the current and probably learned to
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  read, and then it's a Friday, thanks for that. That's great,
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  And then I might, you know, dig into some solutions and talk about
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  over police and talk about overchargeting and stop, you know, stop spending seventy
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  five thousand dollars to prosecute and in prison a homeless person who steals something worth
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  forty dollars from a multi billion dollar Why are we spending taxpayer money to protect
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  multi billionaires? And why are we doing it at a ratio that completely eliminates
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  any notion of a cost benefit analysis? Right? Like, what are we
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  doing here? You know how much it costs to bring someone who's charge is
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  stealing from Walmart to quote for or five times housing in jail, Pay for
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  the judge, pay for the prosecutor, pay for the cell officers at winder
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  police attention, Hey for the staff, pay for the quotment, for the
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  saint we believed for his defense. What are we doing to say that Walmart
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  doesn't have another speaker sole? You know, and I'm not saying that the
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  theft is irrelevant, but if you're at a point where you can't stack your
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  jails, we've gonard, You've got to do some sort of cost benefit analysis
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  instead of just saying no, that's the staff real you go to jail periods
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  right like, we're we're cost we're spending more money than we could ever hope
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  to save on stuff like that, and stuff like that just got to go
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  away. Same with you know, administration of justice crime stilling to the important
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  you know, all our local counteraries off, I will say, does do
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  an extraordinary job of not taking those things over seriously. But they're you know,
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  still bound by the margins drawn from the fire ag right, they only
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  have so much destruction. So if if not for the bleeding heart liberal liberal
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  perspective of you know, just not over being leading zealous when it comes to
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  our correctional system, there's a fiscal area that you could look at, maybe
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  from a right wing perspective that it actually does make sense to not be over
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  zealous as well. No, that's exactly right, you know, and it's
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  you know, I certainly get called bleeding heart in left wing sometimes, but
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  I actually have views that land across the spectrum. And you know, I
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  know the people who see this my way see this my way, so I
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  need to convince them. And yeah, I think if we're going to start
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  yelling about this and hope to turn around minds that don't see it that way.
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  Yeah, just talks the largest sense. They're pressing, all right,
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  money, so dealing west and can get a third eight yacht? You know
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  what are we doing here? Bobby, Always appreciate your time and your perspective.
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  It always leaves me sort of chuckling to myself as well once we get
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  to the very end of it. Thank you for your time. Thanks brother,
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  Just you might get a kick out of this. I forgot we had
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  to schedule. If I am sitting on the sidebar, sitting on the grass
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  on the hill on the side of a Florida highway, I thought you to
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  drug offend yourself in a minute. Thank you so much. We'll be sure
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  to upload that as the photo. Bobby Russ and Criminal Defense, thank you
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  for your time.