Sandage Justifies CALLOUS Retaliation Against Inmates

10/16/2021

Sheriff Jon Sandage finally responded to news he took access to computer tablets away from inmates. The tablets are provided by Inmate Communication Solutions (ICS) which provides telecommunications services to detention facilities.

Thursday, the county board asked the county to renegotiate the ICS contract with regards to the tablet cost. The board wanted the commission to the county removed and prices for inmates lowered.

Early Friday morning, reports from inside the jail said the inmates were no longer allowed to use them. The Democratic County Board members issued a statement condemning Sandage’s callous decision.

According to WEEK:

Inmates have had those tablets in their possession for a while, but Sandage said he ordered them taken away because he’s uncomfortable operating under a contract that might not be signed.
The sheriff said inmates were upset when corrections officers took away the tablets Thursday night.
“We’re upset for them,” the sheriff said.
WEEK

The statement that the Sheriff was uncomfortable operating without the contract update is ridiculous. The contract update would be retroactive to October of last year (2020). Emails from the Sheriff’s office showed he had no problem with Comcast installing fiber optic cables in both October 2020 & January 2021 (Comcast doesn’t do this for free by the way). He had no problem with the inmates using the tablet–according to him–for at least a month prior to any discussions of this contract update. Sandage blames the county board, though it’s literally his choice to take them away.¹

Sandage told 25 News that it’s ridiculous for the Democrats to politicize this.
WEEK

If you call the county jail currently, staff are telling people upset about the change to blame the County Board.

The money the county receives from the fees help fund the sheriff’s office and other programs, said Sandage. He said it’s a choice between taxpayers or the inmates paying for the tablets.
WEEK

As I’ve said before, Sheriff Sandage only cares about them benjamins, yo. He likes making that cash, that paper, that cheddar cheese. Cash Rules Everything Around Me (C.R.E.A.M.), get the money: dolla dolla bills, ya’ll.

All detention centers generate profit. Doesn’t matter whether it’s an immigrant detention center, private prison, federal or state prisons, or jails; they are all sites of wealth creation. According to former-County Board member George Gordon, it costs about $200 per day per inmate. If the jail population is 213, that’s an estimated $42,600 a day (however, if the Sheriff would like to correct the estimated daily cost per inmate, please let me know). That money all goes somewhere: guards, utilities, food, medical, communication, and so on & so forth. All of these groups have a vested interest in the jail being as full as possible because each inmate is literally being forced to be profitable. And, the other huge interest that needs to be pointed out with regards to the local jail: the largely rural, white, and upper class residents of McLean County. The county has kept property taxes flat for years using these types of for-profit schemes. Since the beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020, the overwhelming majority (87%+) of McLean County inmates were their pre-trial on bond meaning they haven’t been convicted of any crime yet. At the same time, black bodies make up the largest plurality (if often times not a majority) of inmates based on race; this despite the fact that African-Americans only account for 8.26% of the McLean County population. We have a very real example of the confinement of black bodies for-profit benefiting an upper class made up mostly of people of a colonial complexion.

Neo-liberal capitalism² needs the iron right fist of the state to complement the invisible left hand of the market. Mass incarceration takes those people who are not productive, according to capitalist valuation, and through confinement, literally squeezes profit out of them. The profit-motive is central to mass incarceration, and its centrality cannot be ignored. A neoliberal capitalist state, and locally capitalist municipalities, will search out profit wherever it can find it; and that includes finding it in human misery like the mass incarceration system.

On any given day, about 630,000 people are incarcerated in county jails nationwide. Jails are literally the entry point into mass incarceration. Every year, 10.6 million people enter jails.

Sheriff Sandage is only doing what is necessary to keep neo-liberal capitalism working. Remember, the system isn’t broken to the Sheriff; it’s working exactly as it’s supposed too. Sandage and other Defendists³ believe they are those that bear witness to the evils of society so that the rest of society can remain blind and function accordingly (the thin blue-brown line). Therefore, shut the fuck up and enjoy the freedom.

According to the jail, family members who want a refund for putting money on an inmate’s tablet tab can call 866-516-0115.

From BloNo With Love

So much for personal responsibility.
I define Neo-Liberalism as a capitalist economico-politico system, beginning in the mid-1970s, where taxes were cut on the wealthy and corporations, regulations (especially in financing) were largely rolled back, a fetish for privatization of traditionally government or non-profit fields (education, defense, etc.), the outsourcing of jobs through globalization and the subsequent shift in the West from relatively stable, middle-class union jobs to unstable, low-wage nonunion jobs, and the hypercarceration and hypercriminilization of poor communities but particularly communities of color.
Defend the Police: Defend the Blue. A theory which states policing & incarceration are necessary parts of a society: the literal thin blue-brown line separating good, orderly, Godly society from those secular, evil anarchists. Therefore, the agents of those institutions are necessarily good, and their lived-experience has authority in decisions regarding policing-incarceration (polceration?). Furthermore, the actions taken to maintain policing-incarceration are necessary for the functioning of society; therefore, while many such actions may look objectively cruel, horrible, and/or downright evil, these actions are at worst necessary evils that society must tolerate. These are NOT examples of systemic problems within the institutions. At most, they are just random outliers, the apple that is consistently bad to the seed.