The only time I'm voting for Ruth Ann Minner

I'm not sure why it upsets me when journalists miss the point. So much of newspaper writing is based on quantity rather than content. It isn't coincidence that the editorial pieces that run down the right-hand side of the Opinion page stop at the bottom.

Still, I find that certain writers have their hearts in the right place. Al Mascitti is usually one of them, and I suppose that's why I'm a little disappointed in today's piece. What appears to be an indictment of the lax conditions which led to Cassandra Arnold's rape could have been much more.

Al details some of the institutional problems that plagued the Delaware Correctional Center, but, like the 93 page report that was 85 days in the making, he draws few conclusions as to the cause of the problems. He even states that "(t)hough the internal report avoids assigning blame for the rape of Cassandra Arnold by inmate Scott Miller, it isn't quite the whitewash some of us expected. It encapsulates the interviews that were conducted, allowing readers to form their own judgments."

Allowing the readers to form their own judgements shouldn't be the job of the State's Report. In theory, that's the job of Al's colleagues at the News Journal. The report should have made definitive conclusions and did not. This isn't a Rorschach test, where there are no wrong answers. This is a criminal investigation. The facts should lead us to an evident conclusion. This report should have been part of a quest for "how" and "why" - it ended up being a regurgitation of "who", "what", "where", and "when".

From his piece, Mr. Mascitti purports that further review of this incident should be broadened to include the underlying conditions that led to the assault and not the specific assault itself - and he's absolutely right. The existing report mentions that many of the interviewed C/O's were either "frozen" or returning to work after an eight hour break. This is not coincidence. Fatigue will diminish the observational abilities and skills of anyone. The lapses in security are an inevitable by-product of officers who need their energies focused on the dangerous inmates around them, and have those energies drained from them by sixteen hour workdays.

Since the Minner administration made the conscious choice to avoid a conclusion to this matter (or chose to delay it until the voters couldn't hold it against them), we are left to decide who is accountable for these problems. In this matter alone, I proudly cast my vote for Ruth Ann Minner.