There were a couple of very interesting front-page stories in this morning’s N&R.
First, Nate DeGraff gives crowded conditions at Guilford County’s jail the Sound and the Fury treatment (italics in the print edition):
The shower in Cellblock B-A is overflowing again.
Water creeps from the stall onto the floor, collecting in a puddle near the door.
Inmates point at the mess. Like many cellblocks in the Greensboro jail, B-A holds more prisoners than it has room for. The unlucky ones sleep on the floor, eye level with the wastewater advancing from the shower stall.
“This is how we live!” an inmate yells.
It’s the second time a leaking shower has disrupted life on the B floor this Friday night. Jail officer Andrew Boggs heard the same complaints a few hours earlier.
He gets out the mop, knowing inmates could prevent the mess if they’d just close the shower curtain properly.
“Shower overflows,” he laments. “All the time.
Too many people occupy too little space in Guilford County’s aging jail system.
The Greensboro and High Point jails daily held an average of 823 inmates in 2006; they have beds for 672. During the summer, the inmate population sometimes exceeded 900.
Most of the people who make decisions about the jail system, the county commissioners, agree the county should fix the problem by building a new jail in downtown Greensboro. The county has hired an architect to design a $105 million building with 1,040 beds, but commissioners cannot agree on how to pay for it.
The two choices: a bond referendum approved by voters or certificates of participation approved by the commissioners. Bonds would be slightly cheaper, saving taxpayers about $3 million over 20 years.
The Faulknerian style goes on, conveying the message that the jail’s a ticking time bomb, though I didn’t really see a link between inmates’ behavior and the crowded conditions in the scenes DeGraff set. Which is not to say the county doesn’t need a new jail. That said, I think county commissioners should just roll the dice and place the jail on a bond referendum. Let the citizens decide for themselves how this issue impacts them.
Then there’s the profile of incoming Bennett College President Julianne Malveaux, minus her recent comments on the Duke lacrosse case. Boyd weighs in, and N&R editor John Robinson is there with an explanation.
But the article does explain how Malveux has figured out how to make the world right:
More takes money, and Malveaux already has started looking for it. She keeps a stash of Bennett College envelopes tucked into her purse. “If anybody wants to know how to give some money,” she said, “I have an envelope for them.”
Cash or check will do.
