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South Carolina State House: Prison Budget Imperiled
Hiring freeze enacted after lawmakers decline to provide funding for new correctional officers …
10 comments
The House is more concerned with giving teachers yet another raise/bonus this year to those who only work nine months out of the year. The focus is to get starting pay for teachers to $50,000, or in other words $5,555.56 per month or $66,6667 per year equivalent. For a teacher’s starting pay. State employees, except for teachers, have gone through years where they received low or no COLA, teacher’s get annual decent raises and come back the following year screaming for more pay. They’ll never stop. Teachers know what the job pays before they even declare it as their major in college. If you want more than what the current pay is, pick a better paying major… but just be aware that you’ll have to work a full 12 months out of the year.
I know some blue collar guys that work in state government…every time they hear anything about teacher pay raises they practically spit and say basically the same thing. I kinda get it, but there is also the issue of the labor market and what teachers have to put up with today…because on the other hand if you ask almost any teacher that is not in a high-end magnet program you will hear one horror story after another of how distopian our schools have become with the violence, filth, and disrespect they have to put up with. I know one midlands area teacher who actually attended the high school she now teaches at who has been to something like 3 or 4 students’ funerals in one year. That is soul-crushing kind of stuff.
Unless you are in law enforcement, the prison system, or taking care of mental patients, most state employees don’t have to think about having to wade into a brawl to pull apart fighting teenagers and taking a punch or two to the mouth or eyes, or having their car keyed or beaten with a bat by a student. Alot of people in state government who make almost double the entry level salary would not be a teacher even if they could keep their current pay grade. So yeah, I get somewhat the argument that “you know what the pay is before you even get there” but at the same time when the retention of teachers is pretty crappy because they can get better jobs elsewhere, eventually you have to face the reality of the labor market and do something to stop the attrition.
I agree with both of you. What a starting teacher makes to work for 190 days a year is pretty dang good. Having said that, I don’t know what my price tag would be to do that job, but it’d be BIG! Dealing with young people isn’t my thing.
Would your number come down if you were able to be in charge of your classroom knowing that the administration had your back? Kid acts up in class, he goes to the office where he’s sent to in school suspension. Instead of what happens today, a kid beats up a resource officer and goes back to class. I can remember as a Freshman watching a principle and coach slam a kid up against the lockers putting a dent into the door because he mouthed off to a teacher. But that was back when the punishment you got at school was nothing compared to what you were in for when dad got home.
The House not approving funding for cell phone blocking simply shows you that all of the lawyers in the State House don’t want those that fund their livelihood to be disrupted while incarcerated. Just think how much Todd Rutherford alone makes from his clients being able to have cell phones while locked up.
Preach!
Well, if it isn’t the same FITSNews who cries to high heaven every time a presumed-innocent is given bond and every time a convict is sentenced to less than the maximum or every time a sentence is reduced for reasons allowed by statute!!!!!
Where do you think staffing for those jails and prisons you want to fill with people would come from?
And it isn’t a matter of money alone.
It takes a special person to be an incarceration guard and not become a criminal him/herself. Society can produce only so many of those people; therefore, it should limit the number of incarcerated people in proportion to the available officers.
Society should be smart on crime, not rabidly tough on crime.
Looking forward to your tune changing, FITS, when your source of ads and sponsorship changes.
Can those who are cast out of the prison system because of the inmate to guard ratio becomes higher than what you want come live in your neighborhood?
Bring back truth in sentencing, if you’re sentenced to 10 years, you serve 10 years… not 6. If you murder someone, no pleading it down to involuntary manslaughter.
The easy answer is commercialize the prison system. Companies will build prisons and control prisoners better than the state will.
SubZeroIQ is a fitting name. Just because people call you that a lot doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a compliment.
As for your comment, a society that’s ‘rabid’ on crime is a society that has less crime once the criminals are removed from said society. Of course, the crime statistics start out higher – until the majority of criminals are no longer on the streets. Then again, once people get soft on crime and let the criminals back out on the streets, it peaks again.
At this point, Commifornia (AKA California) should be the example. They released “inmates” throughout the state and now have crimewaves like never seen before.