More Jails for More Crowds

More Jails for More Crowds

Jack Leonard writes in today's LA TIMES on a number of Paris Hilton jail time-related issues ("Hilton case sheds light on sentencing process").

The thrust of the article is that local state judges are helpless to insure that all of those convicted will serve their full sentences, because a federal decree found the jail overcrowding Los Angeles was perpetrating on its own to be unlawful and unconstitutional.

The article notes that City prosecutors are looking for ways to modify the federal order to "ensure that more dangerous offenders serve more of their time." Why would they do that? The jail's early release program already distinguishes between violent and nonviolent offenders. Pure political posturing.

The article states that, over the last 5 years, 200,000 inmates have been released early, including some who committed violent crimes during the time they would otherwise have been locked up. Ok. But how many did not commit violent crimes within the jail - or die themselves - because they weren't so overcrowded they went crazy in a place where the jailers couldn't maintain control?

Answer: who cares? Sometimes it seems that our society figures if they're prisoners, they're not really human beings. Even though many haven't been convicted of any crime (arrestees awaiting trial are not eligible for early release), the majority of people on the outside still couldn't care less about their living conditions, and resent the federal law that does.

The article quoted one local prosecutor suggesting the only answer to the problem is to build more, and more colossal cages for the prisoner population.

Wait a minute. If our criminal law enforcement system of putting people in jails is such a great crime-stopper, how come there's still so many criminals after all these years of having it in place?

Maybe we like crime. If we liked crime, and wanted to increase both the number of criminals, and the violence of their crimes, we might come up with just the system we have. We would put petty criminals and mentally-disabled people in jammed windowless stinkholes where they slept on the floor. We certainly wouldn't be expanding programs for vocational training or psychological counseling. Which wouldn't end crime, but would probably reduce crime a lot more than pouring more money into the current system.

A system that in some ways appears designed to foster crime. And, absent the interference of a federal judge, violates some important laws called the Bill of Rights.

Maybe we don't like crime. But our system sometimes acts like it does. We may not like the results. But that's how it works.

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.

Baca ordered to report on Hilton's release

The LA TIMES reports today that L.A. County Sheriff Baca has been formally ordered by the County Board of Supervisors to report on why he ordered Paris Hilton released "early."

It's likely he'll formally reiterate his prior explanation: that the judge gave her a too-harsh sentence in the first place, and she had medical problems that the jail couldn't handle.

And a couple days ago, it was reported that a Hilton forebear had previously contributed to Baca's reelection campaign. And there is general suspicion that Baca (unlike the rest of us!) treats celebrities differently.

But I'm thinking about the Boston Strangler. Albert DeSalvo was convicted in the early sixties of sexually assaulting and strangling more than a dozen women in their homes, in a highly-publicized trial, but sentenced to imprisonment in the state's asylum for the criminally-insane - Bridgewater State Mental Hospital - following a brilliant defense by F. Lee Bailey. You can imagine how careful they were not to let The Boston Strangler out.

Nevertheless, he escaped a few months later - and then turned himself in! The escape, DeSalvo explained, was to draw public attention to the hideous conditions at the mental hospital. It worked. Big scandal.

The conditions in the L.A. County Jails are unspeakable. The system routinely relies on them to obtain confessions for defendants in criminal cases. The deal is, confess today, whether you did it or not, and you'll be out on probation tonight, or at least transferred to state prison. Of those who haven't spent the night there, only a defense attorney who has discussed these options with a trembling defendant while the stench coming through the bars makes your eyes water can understand.

This is not something the chief jailer wants somebody like Paris Hilton talking about, because people would listen to her. And they certainly don't want her dying behind bars, as so many inmates with obvious medical needs do. So they let her out.

That's how it works.