Worth The Money?

A man previously convicted of aggravated criminal sexual assault and theft will be going back to prison:

A homeless convict was ordered held without bail Tuesday for allegedly beating and sodomizing a Schiller Park man with a tree branch in Grant Park.

Cortez Foster is accused of beating the 65-year-old victim so bad late Friday, he remains intubated at Northwestern Memorial Hospital with severe head trauma, eye and nose fractures and brain swelling, Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Morgan Creppel said.

The victim has found wearing only a sock and shirt, so maybe a bit of Grant Park hanky-panky was being negotiated but the deal went sour, or the attacker ripped off the man's clothes before attacking with the tree branch.

But that's not the point here, the point is that the taxpayer is going to be supporting this repeat criminal once again, and for quite a period of time.

Is he worth the money it will cost to keep him sheltered, fed, alive and well? We are told that it costs (on average) something like $90,000/year to keep a criminal in prison.

If the law-abiding taxpayer is forced to fork over that sort of money, is it not reasonable to expect some sort of positive return for all that cash?

This guy, Cortez Foster, is a poster child for wasted money and effort, money tossed straight down the drain.

Seems to me that - after a criminal demonstrates he is not redeemable and will not provide any useful or valuable input to society in general (an obligation we all have) - that it becomes reasonable to write them off, not send them off.

It's not just the matter of cost to keep these animals caged, although nationwide that cost is huge, but the reality that no matter how much is invested in attempting to reform the vast majority of these losers, they will still commit more crime, each time more violent, more inhumane.

At some point we must say "enough", and put these subhuman animals down, just as we would a rabid dog. No more of this touchy-feely guilt trip that contends that if we spent enough time, enough money, and enough effort to reform these repeat offenders , they would magically return to society as reborn law-abiding citizens.

At least the Arabs recognize how big the problem is, that finger-wagging and fine-sounding talks from psychiatrists hardly ever do the job, so they chop off your hand on the first offense as a real warning, and if you keep up your nasty ways, off goes your head. No long prison term at the taxpayers expense.

So maybe - in the final analysis - it does come down to the cost. No nation on earth can afford to have a huge prison population of losers that - given the chance - will only do worse and worse things.

The population of planet earth is approaching seven billion human beings. The percentage of those who just will not abide by society's guidelines - so we can all get along(barely) without killing each other - are of no use to anybody.

Why keep them around? And what for?

Thousands of good men have died in Bush's wars. The world continues to turn without them. The few criminals that may be recoverable by use of our present "penitent" philosophy that would be otherwise lost can easily be considered as - What did Bush and Cheney like to call it? - collateral damage.

So... Is Cortez Foster worth the money to lock him away for another decade or two? At some point soon, we will all have to decide if we can really afford to invest the money and time needed to make ourselves feel good over coddling unrepentant criminals.

Harsh? Yes, but a line has to be drawn somewhere. What we're doing now is not working.