Sanity is always preferred over insanity.

“Voters approved a levy in 2012 to fund the proposed new juvenile detention facility and courthouse known as the King County Children and Family Justice Center. Opponents of the project...”

“... have chronically refused to admit they lost at the polls. Instead of addressing how we might reduce youth crime, they have been wasting public money and time on trying to violate the clearly-expressed will of the majority.”

Fixed that for you. You’re welcome.

That building is definitely off-kilter.

I still want to hear how any of the proposed Restorative Justice alternative solutions are even remotely compassionate for the rape victim who has to sit next to her rapist in a classroom, potentially for years, after we've decided we're going to reintegrate rapists back into their communities instead of jailing them.

The best I've heard from the prison abolitionsts is "well we already have that, since lots of rape isn't reported, isn't prosecuted, or doesn't result in a conviction." True enough, but I'll take a flawed system where the victim at least sometimes gets to live a day-to-day life without the presence of her attacker, over one where she is never granted that freedom.

In a way, Restorative Justice sells better for cases of murder; it's a lot easier to to explain the merits of your proposed Restoration to a corpse, than to a living human being who has been raped or maimed or disfigured in a violent crime.

@4

Architectural photography is a specialized, technical discipline, and the image-processing firmware/software in late-mode cell phones isn't quite up to the challenge just yet.

"The court upholds the permit and says EPIC must pay attorneys fees and costs for the county and construction company."

Perhaps The Stranger should now publish an article about how all of the money EPIC wasted could have been spent on facilities and counseling for at-risk youth?

The prison profiteers apparently have all their SLOG trolls out in force today

@8: Cheap drive-bys are so much better than honest dialog of EPIC fail, eh?

Seattle’s Type I / Type II decision business is some notoriously tricky shit. Very poorly drafted. Even experienced land use attorneys routinely fuck it up. Props to Smith and Lowney for fighting it all the way out, even if the bad guys won in the end.

@8: There is no private prison firm involved with its administration (so far).

“The case is not EPIC’s only legal fight. The group has also argued that the levy to fund the project was misleading because it did not explicitly state a plan to build a jail. Last year, the appeals court agreed”

The text of what the voters approved was.....

“The King County council passed Ordinance No. 17304 concerning a replacement facility for juvenile justice and family law services. This proposition would authorize King County to levy an additional property tax for nine years to fund capital costs to replace the Children and Family Justice Center, which serves the justice needs of children and families. It would authorize King County to levy an additional regular property tax of $0.07 per $1,000 of assessed valuation for collection in 2013. Increases in the following eight years would be subject to the limitations in chapter 84.55 RCW, all as provided in Ordinance No. 17304”

I don’t understand the appeals court justification, but all a rejection would mean is that the taxpayers would be further on the hook for this project, the facility would still be completed, and no additional funds would be directed towards alternatives to incarceration. The only win would be for the oppostion’s attorneys.

Competition here is super-intense but the anti-youth jail claque have a lock on the title Court Jesters of Seattle Politics. All the looniest turnes this city can spin up are represented in their number.

*tunes

“Despite the council's retroactive ordinance, the court writes that legislation cannot be applied retroactively when doing so would affect vested rights.”

In other words, our Constitutional prohibition on “ex post facto” laws which we all supposedly learned in junior high school. But Mike O’Brien heard that public money was in grave danger of not being wasted, so he sprang into action. (The chance to deny local voters something we had clearly approved made this a target of irresistible appeal to his fellow City Council Members.)