You won’t read this anywhere else, because…well, I don’t know why.  I think it’s somewhat important because it was a major issue during 2009 and the recent Sheriff’s campaign.

Marc Odien explains that the Commission of Corrections won a court battle to ensure that inmates get assessed for safety risks, get hygenic supplies, and have clean bedding.  Guantanamo Tim loses one.

The Sheriff’s department is desperately trying to look decisive and ethical by firing the deputies who illegally beat the crap out of a detainee and lied about it.  Beating the crap out of a detainee, of course, is just another word for torture.  It’s also not the first such allegation, and calls into question the veracity of all of this “suicide” talk.

I picture federal DOJ interviews of county officials being not unlike the Monty Python Parrot Sketch.  ”They’re not dead, they’re resting”.

But while we have inmate after inmate end up pining for the fjords, the state action is based on the premise that the jails are not up to the minimum standards the state requires, quite contrary to what the county is saying.  This is such a failure of leadership, but the Boss Hogg-esque Collins administration and our own Rosco P. Coltrane get away with it because the people of Hazzard Erie County for the most part don’t have contact with the prisons and don’t really care if people behind bars are treated humanely or inhumanely.

Until it’s their neighbor or family member.