LOS ANGELES - The American Civil Liberties Union is calling for sweeping changes at the Los Angeles County’s Men’s Central Jail.

Imagined it packed with inmates.

In a statement, the ACLU said that dangerous overcrowding at the jail causes or contributes to violence and mental illness.

Describing conditions at the facility as “nightmarish,” Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU National Prison Project, said that “Men’s Central Jail is so grossly overcrowded, dangerous and dungeon-like that it puts intolerable stress on the inmates, as well as the jailers.”

For more, go here.

KANSAS CITY - It’s a great idea … for keeping a jackboot firmly planted on the neck of the working class and the poor.

The rent is non-negotiable.

See, what some municipalities do is this: they charge people a daily rate for their jailhouse stays.

If they can’t pay, they go back to jail where they accumulate more charges.

The end result for the municipality? Profit!

It’s Dickensian, for sure, and maybe a little Kafkaesque.

For one man’s tale of woe struggling with this system, go here.

And the gap between Us and Them grows ever wider.