Justice Center Committee member Bill Fink wrote a letter to the editor finally revealing their rationale for sizing the large urban jail in central Houghton. In doing so, he reveals a major flaw in their calculations. They use the historic inmate population for the jail and airport workcamp combined to project future need. They then treat this combined jail and workcamp estimate as it were for the jail size only. Their estimated size of 78 beds would be reasonable if it were used for the combined jail and workcamp. Instead they take this combined estimate and arbitrarily add on 32 more beds to get to 110 beds.
http://mininggazette.com/page/content.detail/id/512170.html?nav=5004
If his speculations about Houghton County getting overrun with new inmates because of fears about what the State may do are true, then wouldn't it be better to locate the jail someplace where it can be easily expanded? Someplace like the empty Camp Kitwen? A 200 bed jail could be built at Kitwen with the extra beds rented out to create an income to pay for local jobs running the facility.
Open Kitwen - Create Jobs
"Complex Factors"?? Do you assume we will not understand these "Complex Factors"?
ReplyDeleteWhat is not so complex is that this very same national consultant (Rod Miller) specifically advised adjacent counties to rely on Houghton County for their future Jail needs. Lets see, advise other counties to rely on Houghton County to board their inmates and then advise Houghton County to size a really big jail using "Complex Factors" that common people will not understand.
Seems like a conflict of interest to me. Did we pay this guy for this advice?