Residing In A Red State Is Hazardous To Your Health
In late September, a Nebraska woman was sentenced to two years in prison for helping her daughter obtain abortion pills. The case was less about abortion than about some bizarre behavior regarding the burial of the fetal remains, but this is still appalling on any number of levels.
Even so, that’s not what piqued my interest. Rather, I was drawn to one curious footnote to the story, and I’ve heard nothing about it since.
Apparently, the judge in the case had ordered the woman to undergo a psychological evaluation prior to sentencing. Presumably, the results might have helped to mitigate her sentence. Which sounds reasonable, perhaps even routine.
But that evaluation never happened. It was, strangely, “canceled due to lack of funding.”
Huh? A person whose future may have hinged on that evaluation was denied it because the state couldn’t afford it?
How underfunded are we talking? How many other people moving through the Nebraska judicial system haven’t received court-ordered psych-evals? How many might have seen their sentences softened, or even eliminated? If these evals are underfunded in the judicial system, are they likewise underfunded in other state agencies like, say, healthcare or education or law enforcement?