The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 110, No. 37, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 14, 2000 Page: 3 of 28
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76e &uuuUa*t RECORD
THURSDAY 14 SEPTEMBER 2000
3
coming
events
Lilt event* in this calendar
by calling the Chamber
of Commerce at 323*6234
thu
fri
sat
sun
mon
tue
wed
14
15
18
17
18
18
28
opinion
page
• S p.m , TOPS Meeting, Fire Hail,
• 4 30 p m., CMS Jr. High & CHS JV football games against Spearman, Here.
______WOi.lolwirll____
• 12 noon, Lions Club Meeting, Fire Hall
• I p m , AA Meeting. United Methodist Church, 6th A Main
• 8 00 pm. CHS Varsity Football Game against Perryton, Here
mm,*/*—*
• 8 30 am. American Cancer Society Bike-a-Thon, Lake Marvin Road
• 11 00 a m , Canadian River Championships Team Roping, Canadian Ro-
deo Arena
• 6 00 pm., Ducks Unlimited Banquet. City Hall Auditorium.
• 8 30 a m , First United Methodist Church Early Worship Service, Sunday
School 9 30 am., Morning Worship 10 30 a.m., Evening Worship6:30p.m
• 10 am., Sunday Mass, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, 10 a m., CCD
Classes.
• 9 30 am . First Christian Church Sunday School, 10:30 am., Morning
Worship, 6pm, Evening Worship
• 9 30 am , Church of Christ Sunday Bible Class, 10:30a m, MomingWor-
ship, 6 p.m . Evening Worship, 7 p.m , Wednesday Bible Class.
• 9 45 am. First Presbyterian Church Sunday School, Worship Service 11
am.
• 9 30 a m , First Baptist Church Sunday School. 10:45 a m., Morning Wor-
ship, 6 p.m.. Training Union, 7 p.m , Evening Worship
• 10 am , Assembly of God Christian Education, 6:30 p.m., Evening
Worship
• 10 a m . Pentecostal Church Sunday School. 11 am. Morning Worship, 7
p.m, Evening Worship.
• 10 a m.. Central Baptist Church Sunday School, 11 am., Morning Wor-
ship. 6 p m.. Evening Worship
• 10 30a.m . Believer's Covenant Sunday Worship.
• 12 noon, AL-ANON meeting, Hood Abstract Building
* 5 30 p.m , Canadian City Council Meeting, City Hall
• 8 00 a m . Commissioners Court meeting. Courthouse.
• 12 noon. Rotary Club Meeting. WCTU
• 6 30 p m . School Board Meeting, School Administration Building
• 8 00 p.m., AA A AL-ANON Meetings. (Separate), United Methodist
Church. 6th A Mam
• 10 a m -2 p m . Sagebrush Painters, Fire Hall
field Notes...Continued
for years.
It's called “checkbook democracy,” and it is a damn shame. For too
long, the public has accepted the sad fact that wealth buys access to
power, which in turn purchases favorable legislation, and has done lit-
tle to change it. Bush is guilty. Gore is guilty. And it would be a helluva
lot easier to name the politicians who aren’t, than to name those who
are.
But no, we are not surprised by it Nor are we surprised by the di-
minishing level of the presidential debate, contrary to W.’s promise to
elevate it, to which 1 offer my non-subliminal response: Hogwash!
By the way, W. may have cornered the market on political gaffes,
but it’s no monopoly. Right here in our corner of the Panhandle, Dis-
trict Attorney candidate Rick Roach has been dishing out a little sub-
liminal campaign advertising of his own with the personalized chip clips
he circulated at last week's Lipscomb County celebration. No way he
can't have known that somebody, somewhere, at some point, would call
them “Roach clips.”
mtivmmMjs&*
Report from the Gulag
By Michael Kill ii The Tens IHcnrr
If YOU’RE CONVINCED that someone’s out to
Iget you, chances are you’re paranoid—or maybe
you just live in Texas. According to a new report by
the Justice Policy Institute, a criminal justice re-
search group, one of every twenty Texas adults is ei-
ther in prison, in jail, on probation, or on parole.
There are more people in prison in Texas that in any
other state, and the industry is booming.
“Out of every twenty adult Texan* you meet, one
is under criminal justice control,” said Vincent
Schiraldi, the Institute’s director. “ The sheer num-
bers of people in prison and jail in Texas are signs of
a system fixated on punishment and devoid of
compassion.”
And no, this is not another predictable diatribe
about eh sad state of Texas under Dubya Bush. As
Schiraldi told reporters, “This is a bipartisan effort.
Half of the 1990s growth was during Ann Richards’
tenure.” Some of the prison construction was due to
federal mandates ending brutal overcrowding. But
just as mindless freeway expansion only generates
more traffic, new prison beds are now themselves
overfilled in the continuing frenzy of national incar-
ceration for which Texas, our Texas, is the lone star.
If you’re an African American, your odds are
even grimmer. Black people in Texas are incarcer-
ated at seven times the rate of whites, and nearly one
in three young African-American men in Texas is
under some form of criminal justice control. The in-
carceration rate for blacks in Texas is 63 percent
higher than the national rate.
Other numbers to ponder: Texas has the largest
prison population in the country (163,190), surpass-
ing the prison population of California (163,067),
which has 13 million more citizens. If Texas were in-
deed “a whole other country," it would have the
highest incarceration rate (1,035 prisoners for
100,000 citizens) in the world, easily surpassing the
United States (682) and Russia (685), the next two in
rank.
But y’all feel safer now, don’t you? Not hardly.
Despite adding more than 100,000 prisoners this de-
cade, Texas’ crime rate had declined much more
slowly than other large states. From 1993 to 1998,
Texas’ crime rate fell (5.1 percent) at half the na-
tional average (10 percent), and the least of any of
the nation’s five largest states. Compare only New
York, similar to Texas in population. During the
Nineties, Texas added more prisoners to it s prison
system (98,000) than New York's entire prison popu-
lation (73,000): that is, five times as many additional
prisoners as New York. Yet since 1995, New York’s
decline in crime was four times greater than that of
Texas. Texas’ current incarceration rate is 80 per-
cent higher than New York’s, yet Texas’ crime rate
is 30 percent higher; in 1998, the murder rate was 25
percent higher.
But it isn’t the murderers we’re locking up, any-
way. There are 89,400 people incarcerated in Texas
for non-violent crimes, more than the entire pris-
oner population (violent and non-violent) of the
United Kingdom (a country of 60 million people) or
of New York, the nation’s third largest state.
“If locking more people up really reduced crime,
Texas should have the lowest crime rate in the coun-
try,” said report co-author Jason Ziedenberg. “The
cost of having 1 in 3 young black men under criminal
justice control is a steep price to pay for the state’
lackluster crime declines.”
It does not take a criminal genius (or a criminolo-
gist) to conclude that the state’s orgy of
prison-building is a spectacularly expensive failure,
in a state whose politicians never tire of bragging
about how little public money they spend. Yet, as the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported, “When law-
makers return to Austin in January, they will be
asked to send a $500 million bond package to the votr
ers for the construction of three maximum-security
units.”
The First Rule of Holes: when you’re in one, stop
digging.
The full report, “Texas Tough; An analysis of In-
carceration and Crime Trends in the Lone Star
State, ” is available at www.cjcj.org.
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Ezzell, Nancy & Brown, Laurie Ezzell. The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 110, No. 37, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 14, 2000, newspaper, September 14, 2000; Canadian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth736309/m1/3/: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hemphill County Library.