Overcrowding
The LA TIMES reports today, following a review of 2 million jail releases, that Paris Hilton will be serving more time than 80% of those convicted of her same sort of crime - probation violation on a DUI. The article goes on to discuss Sheriff Baca's early release program - which the Hilton case judge specifically barred from application to Hilton, and sent her back to jail in defiance of.
Nothing too astonishing here. People who become judges can find they prefer the exercise of power with a minimum of interference. So when a fellow government official impinges on that power, there will be this kind of conflict.
More interesting is comparison with another headline the same day in the same paper: "City attorney, D.A. wage heated turf war." Two Los Angeles government prosecutors are sniping at each other because, with an election coming up, City Attorney Delgadillo is keeping the juiciest cases for himself, by charging them as misdemeanors (District Attorney Steve Cooley handles felonies).
Both of these stories grow out of the same phenomenon: the vast presence criminal law has come to have in our society. In the years since the Democratic "Great Society" program of funding social welfare and education programs to address our country's ills "failed", we have embarked on a course of throwing every conceivable problem in jail: poverty, mental disability, substance addiction, you name it. Laws that once were enforced only against the most egregious offenders are now routinely applied on a "zero tolerance" basis. The reason? As the turf wars reported today illustrate, crime is power. For municipal officials, crime is like the wind in a schooner's sails. It gets them where they want to go. So the more "crime" they can create, and then "fight", the better, up to a point.
Jail overcrowding can only be resolved by building more and bigger jails, or by reducing the police overcrowding in our personal lives. Which will it be? Where government officials like judges and prosecutors are concerned, crime is power. The end of the Paris Hilton story will be a cry for "reform" in the shape of more, and more colossal, cages for the poor and afflicted. That's how it works.
Nothing too astonishing here. People who become judges can find they prefer the exercise of power with a minimum of interference. So when a fellow government official impinges on that power, there will be this kind of conflict.
More interesting is comparison with another headline the same day in the same paper: "City attorney, D.A. wage heated turf war." Two Los Angeles government prosecutors are sniping at each other because, with an election coming up, City Attorney Delgadillo is keeping the juiciest cases for himself, by charging them as misdemeanors (District Attorney Steve Cooley handles felonies).
Both of these stories grow out of the same phenomenon: the vast presence criminal law has come to have in our society. In the years since the Democratic "Great Society" program of funding social welfare and education programs to address our country's ills "failed", we have embarked on a course of throwing every conceivable problem in jail: poverty, mental disability, substance addiction, you name it. Laws that once were enforced only against the most egregious offenders are now routinely applied on a "zero tolerance" basis. The reason? As the turf wars reported today illustrate, crime is power. For municipal officials, crime is like the wind in a schooner's sails. It gets them where they want to go. So the more "crime" they can create, and then "fight", the better, up to a point.
Jail overcrowding can only be resolved by building more and bigger jails, or by reducing the police overcrowding in our personal lives. Which will it be? Where government officials like judges and prosecutors are concerned, crime is power. The end of the Paris Hilton story will be a cry for "reform" in the shape of more, and more colossal, cages for the poor and afflicted. That's how it works.
Labels: Chief Baca, civil rights, Cooley, Delgadillo, human rights, L.A. County Jail, Paris Hilton, police brutality, police misconduct
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