.

… this does not make sense to me.

State prison officials are considering a budget-cutting plan to lay off more than 1,000 workers , close three drug treatment centers including one in Burnet and reduce the number of meals fed to prisoners on weekends.

Hundreds of parole and probation officers would be among those laid off.

“Why the hell don’t we just open the prison doors?” Juanita asked when I told her about this.

“First off, most of the people in prison are there because of drugs.  Stopping treatment for drugs is insane.  So, don’t bother putting them in prison or don’t bother letting them out if you’re not going to try to solve the problem.”

“We’re laying off school teachers and parole officers,” she rolls her eyes.  “That just doesn’t seem like a working solution to the crime problem we have.  Honey, we have 112 prisons in Texas.  The Republicans want to turn them into Gulags.”

Thank goodness we have a couple of Democrats left in the State House.

“Tell them that plan is DOA,” said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, whose committee oversees prison operations. “Their plan could dismantle many of the treatment programs that are making our criminal justice system work right now.”

“Rick Perry’s Texas:  Bringing you cheap, underfed, and undersupervised labor from the Gulags,” Juanita suggests as a new state motto.  “I guess they need to remind him that his little buddy, Tom DeLay, will be spending three years there.”