Taxes Should Be Used for Education, Not Incarceration
By Annette Sommers
Tangipahoa Parish officially acknowledged that voters shot down a proposed tax Tuesday which would have funded a new parish jail. The half-cent sales tax was expected to bring in $8.67 million a year to make more space for incoming inmates.
That makes total sense. Let’s tax our citizens so we can build a new jail for criminals instead of implementing a tax to help relieve our education crisis, which would help combat crimes in the first place.
Did Tangipahoa Parish really think its residents would fall for that?
While the people of Tangipahoa shot down the proposal for a jail tax, they approved the renewal of a tax that helps fund their parish library. A smart move credited to voters.
But it won’t be long before other parishes try to pull what Tangipahoa did because of money. Sheriffs are paid $24.39 a day on average, per inmate. They benefit from higher incarceration rates.
Let me repeat that. According to research done by the Department of Corrections, the more people who are in jail, the more sheriffs get paid. This is happening in Baton Rouge just as much as Tangipahoa, and unless people open their eyes to this corruption, it’s bound to continue.
