Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Behind The Hate-Let's Go To Jail

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"I'm not playing this off like I'm some suffering saint, I believe that I can be a better sheriff by having a better understanding of jail operations from the perspective of an inmate, because the idea came to me while attending a law-enforcement leadership conference at Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington, I believe it is divinely inspired." Curran's intentions were to learn how to improve programs to help inmates succeed on the outside and draw attention to initiatives in the jail that might work to decrease recidivism in state prisons.

The sheriff will spend his first three nights in one of the jail's dorm-style accommodations, according to jail officials. While other inmates in that area sleep in beds arranged in rows in a large room, the sheriff will have his own 6-by-8-foot cell. From there he will spend two nights in a general population cell that is one of several arranged around a day room where inmates play cards and watch television. Curran also will spend a night in the maximum-security segregation unit and the jail's medical unit, he said.

While in jail, he took a parenting and family communication class, sat in with a substance abuse group and worked on a road-cleanup crew. Upon release on Aug 20th, Curran, a Catholic saved his religious fire and brimstone rebuke for the Illinois Department of Corrections which he blamed for allowing conditions that led gangs to within the walls of its prisons. The state prison system "has treated inmates like caged animals, only to see them released back into their communities angrier and more bitter than they originally were and programs at the Lake county jail which can hold 740 inmates are truly special" he said.

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