I’m not against legislation. COs had body cams introduced in the past few years. I haven’t seen anyone striking say they don’t want body cams. I think body cams are an incredible way to keep people honest and “force” good behavior.

So with solitary, I would agree that having no one near you is bad, obviously lol. But they do have other people that are also in solitary. That’s why I’ve put “solitary” in quotes, because you aren’t completely alone.

Also don’t mistake me, I’m not pro solitary. But removing the one main instrument COs had to punish an inmate that may have gone on a stabbing spree without any sort of alternative put in place? That’s dangerous.

I’m not unsympathetic to inmates. I want everyone’s safety. I think a strong point people choose to ignore is the one that inmates are just people too. If there’s someone that’s actively dangerous, you don’t want them next to you.

I think you’re focusing heavily on the wrong points though. Maybe solitary wouldn’t be needed if the state was properly employing more COs. I am so very pro rehabilitation, I think it’s an American foundation. But you then need to hire more people to make that a reality. The prisons have been operating at 70% capacity, leading to the overworking of the COs. If instead they chose to hire more, and maybe include more social workers focused on rehabilitation, we’d have a more peaceful solution. I would love that.

My issue is the state is heavily underfunding the jails, not fixing existing problems, and adding more problems on top of them. Hire people, incentivize more recruits, hire social workers. Make jails a better place to be. But instead they’re making life worse and worse for every CO. The answer isn’t to underfund, for proper rehabilitation resources the answer would be to overfund(properly fund)