Prison Snips Sentences If Inmates Snip... (Yes, We're Talking About Vasectomies)

If you're wondering what your reproductive capacity is worth in America, it's about 30 days.

Whenever you feel America has finally hit rock bottom, there’s a little more ground to cover before it’s all said and done. Because there’s a judge reducing jail time for inmates willing to get their willy wicked. Judge Sam Benningfield of White County, Tennessee, one of those patches of land you pass driving from Knoxville to Nashville, has put in place a standing order that grants inmates 30 days’ credit on their sentences if they get a vasectomy. Women can earn the same credit for installing a Nexplananon implant.

The White County Courthouse is located in Sparta, making this the most backward, archaic punishment to come out of Sparta since Leonidas just kicked people into a pit. Here’s Judge Benningfield with his best “three generations of recidivists is enough” take:

Judge Benningfield told NewsChannel 5 that he was trying to break a vicious cycle of repeat offenders who constantly come into his courtroom on drug related charges, subsequently can’t afford child support and have trouble finding jobs.

“I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be burdened with children. This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves,” Judge Benningfield said in an interview.

There needs to be a word for the phenomenon of a Neanderthal stumbling into something reasonably rational and then missing the point completely. The cycle of poverty is constantly contributing to delinquency as some — but by no means all, or even most — desperate people see no way out but to take escape their scripted existence through drugs or illicit activities. Some might try to disrupt that cycle of poverty. Judge Benninfield wants to keep criminals from having criminal babies. Hell, he probably has some phrenology training and knows a genetically predisposed criminal baby when he sees it. Whatever his real motivation, he wants to use the stick of the state to coerce people into trading their reproductive capacity for a month. Which many are going to do, because making stupid decisions because they feel cornered and desperate is kind of how they got to this point in the first place.

Apparently 80 inmates have signed on for this since the program began in May. White County only has around 26,000 residents — how many inmates can they possibly have?

At least there’s some sanity left out there:

District Attorney Bryant Dunaway, who oversees prosecution of cases in White County, is worried the program may be unethical and possibly illegal.

“It’s concerning to me, my office doesn’t support this order,” Dunaway said.

“It’s comprehensible that an 18-year-old gets this done, it can’t get reversed and then that impacts the rest of their life,” he added.

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Yes! For the record, that’s a prosecutor who got elected to get tough on crime — being soft on [repeat] offenders is wrong — and even he’s willing to draw the line. He literally has nothing to lose by tacitly backing this insanity, so he deserves a lot of credit here. Too bad he’s bought himself a career-ending “He’s soft on crime dicks!” primary challenge next election.

As one might expect, the ACLU has some concerns as well:

“Offering a so-called ‘choice’ between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional. Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it. Judges play an important role in our community – overseeing individuals’ childbearing capacity should not be part of that role.”

So now Dunaway’s on the same side as the ACLU. Damn, that attack ad is just writing itself. America may be a cultural cesspool, but it’s predictable.

White County Inmates Given Reduced Jail Time If They Get A Vasectomy [News Channel 5]

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