Fear Mongering in Arizona

Reading an article written by Jackie Goldberg for The Bee in California made me realize that Arizona is following the footsteps of California politics whether they want to admit it or not. Their views are just as strong and misaligned on matters such as public safety and prison growth.

Fear mongering is an effective tool to convey and pursue an agenda that benefits only a select few individuals and business and taxes the majority of us heavily in dealing with our budget concerns and spending. Their plan to persuade others to think like them is the number one priority so to assure a strong support system for those legislative bullets to pass without resistance and endorsements by the governor to make them laws.

A year ago, Governor Jerry Brown stepped up to the plate and announced a prison plan called “Realignment” that would require the release of thousands of prisoners back to county jails for supervision and custodial responsibilities. This was met with opposing views of endangering the public unnecessarily and had failure written by many who stood against it. The plan was simple. It was an “attempt to overhaul and redirect a prison system that has been floundering for at least a decade.”

Today many fear mongering citizens and politicians are silenced as more than 25,000 prisoners have been released back to the community or county jails in a little as 16 months after the plan began. Even more impressive is the report that states “The count of people on parole is down almost 30,000, and the number of people held in private out-of-state prisons is down 10 percent; all that without a spike in crime.” It goes on to report that “Based on an encouraging first year, can we expect further parole and sentencing reforms resulting in even more reductions in corrections spending in the next few years?”(1)

The pile-on in Arizona politics is to continue building more prison beds instead of addressing the current issues and reduce prison populations like many other states are doing as we speak. The deficit, although handled through innovative funding and cutting services or reallocating resources throughout the state, will not stabilize and reduce without the burdensome prison system out of control. Instead of focusing on prison reforms, sentencing alternatives and reducing prison population, Arizona has chosen to do just the opposite duplicating the roadmap California took ten years ago before they hit financial dire straights and realized they can’t keep spending or growing like this any longer.

I am confident that Arizona politicians have the ability to reduce deficit and prison costs but realize that their personal agendas, commitments and other promises prevents them from doing so. In the meantime, it has been clear Arizona has not been exempt from the negative effects of the recession and will continue to suffer needlessly unless these prison costs are curbed and brought back where the funding is adequate and not infringing on other state services year after year as it has for the past ten years.

Arizona citizens and taxpayers must realize that in order to climb out of this rut, it must spend less and invest more into the community businesses rather than private prison contractors who serve only themselves and not the public in any shape or form regardless of the rhetoric of more jobs and better economic conditions locally where the prisons are built. Factual data will disprove any significant contributions and rather, show a strong dependency on state resources to continue their own existence and beneficial relationship with the state through pre-arranged financial arrangements not disclosed to the public.

Whether or not these Arizonian lawmakers can reverse the vicious cycle of creating the “financial apocalypse” of the future depends on how they handle the funding and expenses today. There are some lawmakers who say there are ways to break this cycle of budget deficits and that instead of not doing anything about the growth they should adopt a strategy that could accomplish a solid budget without taking such critical risks to continue spending at the current rate today.

Those who believe in sound fiscal management should push their peers to take a look at these alternatives already identified and not yet brought to the table and suggest they join together in an attempt to resolve Arizona’s fiscal crisis and stabilize their state’s financial condition immediately rather than later.

It is for certain that some will continue their “fear mongering” attitude and make statement of reckless rhetoric to gain attention on their views but in the long run, citizens should insist in responsible government and prudent spending for the next few years to return back to the Arizona we all love and care for..

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/kodiakbears/163296