Everyone’s guilty in the prison mess

Re “Criminal neglect,” editorial, July 26

We are all to blame for overcrowded prisons. For decades, we have ignored the veterans coming back mentally destroyed by the effects of wars. We have ignored the homeless who sleep on sidewalks in cardboard boxes and beg for handouts. We have ignored the ones in schools who were not capable of graduating. We ignored the drug problem, and instead of stopping the pushers and the source, we started locking up the addicted users.

The people educated enough to devise solutions ignored the problems as these helpless people kept falling one by one into a lost and hopeless society. We just locked them up and said, “We are tough on crime.” These unconstitutional crimes against humans are as bad as the crimes of those we lock up. Some judges are willing to say, “Enough is enough, the torture will stop.”

Nora Weber

Bakersfield