re: #161 Gus

It was only when I started working at a job that brought me into contact with high-ranking law enforcement in California that I realized the extent to which the state is owned and operated by the prison guard’s union. All those little pissant counties in Northern Cal, some with only 15,000 people total, they all have prisons in them that are basically the only source of middle-class jerrbs. And all those counties send State Senators down to Sacto, who vote exactly how the prison guard’s union tells them to.

Thus the absurd, counterproductive, heinously expensive Three Strikes Law. And the total gutting of any kind of rehabilitation (cuts down on repeat customers, doncha know). And the absurd pension and benefits structure.

We got involved in a crazy, convoluted overtime investigation. Seems the law sez that certain overcrowding conditions automatically trigger time-and-a-half for the guards. So the unions set up a “shell game” with the prisons. They’d take docile old lifers, load them up in school buses, and cart them around from prison to prison. They’d arrive at Chino at a certain date, and bingo! Overtime for all the guards. The prisoners would stay there a week, and then get loaded up and moved to another prison to trigger the extra pay.

Totally corrupt. But say a word against it and you get painted as “soft on crime” by blanket TV ads in your district.