Letters To The Editor

Letters To The Editor 

To The Editor: 

We support the proposal of John Barr, Chairman of the Wayne County Board of Commissioners, to apply for federal funds under the Public Works Employment Act of 1976 to remodel the J. L. Hudson facility at Beaubien and Madison into the detention center recommended by the National Clearinghouse For Criminal Justice, Planning and Architecture and the Board of Commissioners' own Jail Task Force and accepted, as currently designed, without qualification by the attorneys who have been working for over five years for humane pre-trial detention facilities.

We support the efforts to reform the present bail bond system which presently causes hundreds of persons to be jailed prior to trial simply because they are poor.

We also accept the conclusion of the Detroit-Wayne County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council that the need for new jail facilities over the next four years will necessitate the combined capacity of both the Giffels facility and the National Clearinghouse-recommended facility proposed by Chairman Barr.

No one disputes that the unfinished county jail facility in Westland will violate a number of basic state and constitutional standards. Because of the desperate need for jail space, the Michigan Department of Corrections, in an extraordinary, emergency procedure, granted a variance from those state standards only until a new jail is completed in Downtown Detroit. Everyone concerned with the rights of pre-trial ' detainees and knowledgeable about the unfinished Westland facility knows it will be severely sub-standard, violating both federal constitutional and state standards.

The choice is between

1) a remodeled, National Clearinghouse-recommended facility in Downtown Detroit, meeting or exceeding all applicable standards, conveniently connected by a pedestrian tunnel to the existing county jail and the Recorder's Court,

and

2) a remodeled, inhumane facility out in Westland, violating basic federal constitutional and state standards, cramming human beings into dormitory cages (from 14 to 22 men per cage) within which they will need not only to sleep but also to eat their meals, defecate, urinate and attempt lo defend themselves against homosexual rapes and other assaults from the 13 to 21 other inmates in the same cage.

All resident inmate dormitories are prohibited by both state and national standards.

The Westland facility will cost as much to staff per inmate as the National Clearinghouse-recommended facility proposed by Chairman Barr, especially when one considers the cost of the extra staff and extra sheriff's vans which will be required to transport inmates daily between Westland and the Recorder's Court in Downtown Detroit.

We are also concerned that the Westland facility could be used to justify the movement of county court facilities and other supportive services out of Detroit.

A second new permanent facility in Downtown Detroit, such as proposed by Chairman Barr, will also make it more possible physically, in future years, to remodel the antiquated Clinton Street Jail to bring it up to current standards. Such modernizing of old county detention facilities is now being financed around the country by federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration funds under Part E of the 1970 amendments to the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act pf 1968.

We are informed that the jail inmates' attorneys who have been working for five years tor decent pre-trial detention facilities also support the attempt of Chairman Barr to grasp this opportunity to obtain federal funds under the Public Works Employment Act of 1976 to remodel the J. L. Hudson facility in Downtown Detroit into the detention center recommended by the National Clearinghouse and the Board's own Jail Task Force.

Myzell Sowell

Chief Defender

Father Norman Thomas

Catholic Chaplain

Wayne County Jail

To The Editor:

In the article on South Africa in your Sept. 17 issue, there are the following which call for correction:

(a) "In 1872 Procalamation 1A introduced the Pass System "

This should be: "In 1872 Proclamation 14 (fourteen) introduced the Pass System."

(b) "She is of the Xhosa tribe. "

The Xhosa were never a tribe, but a nation and so are all the ethnic groups found in Africa today.

To my knowledge there is not a single language in Africa south of the Sahara, that has a word for tribe.

But all these languages have words for NATION.

The designation tribe for the African nations, came with the white man, the missionaries and the colonial government.

While it may be true that under colonial rule, the African nations were broken up, brought under the various colonial rulers and branded as tribes, this does not mean that the African people accept this designation.

In our struggle to regain our lands, restore our Manhood and Humanity, we the peoples of Africa, are dropping all those designations given us by our conquerors and TRIBE is one of them. Our ethnic groups may not be nations any more, but tribes they will not be, for at no time were they such before the rape of the African continent.

Above all, I regard myself and refer to myself simply as an AFRICAN , nothing more and nothing less.

Thank you 

Phyllis P. Jordan