More than 90 percent of
state and federal criminal convictions are the result of guilty
pleas, often by people who say they didn't commit a crime. theoutline.com, 8/7/17
Standard stuff, really. Someone who
cannot afford a lawyer is charged with a crime, perhaps one they committed or
perhaps one they did not. A public defender with a massive caseload is
appointed, often meeting their appointed client immediately before trial. The
prosecutor reminds the person charged that if the plea bargain is not accepted,
judges almost always increase the jail/prison time substantially if there is an
ultimate conviction by trial. The public defender confirms that harsh reality. For
those who simply don’t trust the system… or their overwhelmed public defender…
copping a plea is an evil necessity. We all know that, but too many of us
believe that folks in that situation probably committed some other crime that
they are getting away with… and so what?! We just don’t care. Oh, and in the
federal system, where there is no parole, the percentage of plea bargains is
97%!
Looking at the statistics, you can
pretty much assume that for the vast majority of those charged with a crime,
their fate lies not with a judge or jury but with a single individual (and his/her
boss), the prosecutor. So a lot of people go to jail (in theory a short-term
incarceration) or prison (generally for sentences of a year or more) simply to
avoid much worse. For felonies and even a few misdemeanors, those convicted get
a blot on their records that impacts future employment potential, their ability
to get certain governmentally required licenses for certain jobs, their
families lose their income/nurturing and they get to spend time in one of the
cruelest environments our country can offer: dangerous, unfair, constantly
noisy, usually overcrowded with horrible food and second-rate medical care. And
the United States incarcerates 25% of the world’s total prisoners … and
represents only 5% of the earth’s population!
We went through a prison-building
spree when three-strikes legislation was in fashion. Many states and the
federal government even “outsourced” some of that incarceration to uncaring
corporate prisons only concerned with profitability and rife with despicable conduct
from guards and prison officials. For those who copped a plea, the unfairness
of the system festers. Unwanted gang affiliations might be the price of
survival. Anger builds. And if they were second-rate criminals or pure
innocents when they entered the system, they sure as heck have attended
“lectures” from fellow bragging inmates on criminal opportunity and expertise.
With most states following the California pattern, since then-Governor Ronald
Reagan led the movement and shut down most state mental hospitals in the late
1960s/early 1970s, the mentally ill have increasingly become charges of the
California’s jail/prison system. Mixing it up with the criminally insane is
never a good thing.
We’ve shuttered a number of prisons,
even though the number of inmates keeps growing. In most states and the federal
government, austerity measures have slammed jails and prisons very hard. You
have to wonder if jail time in the 21st century itself violates the
proscription against “cruel and unusual punishment” set forth in the Eighth
Amendment. Federal courts have so ruled against blue state California’s
massively overcrowded prison system. So what’s the solution? Releasing
non-violent prisoners early? Releasing folks convicted of marijuana possession,
a substance that is now legal in lots of states? Some of that is happening,
very, very slowly. But some prison policy makers have tried other solutions in
the Golden State. How’s that going?
“[More] than 175,000 people sentenced
to county jails instead of state prisons in the last eight years because of
sweeping changes to California’s justice system, according to an analysis of
state data by the Marshall Project. The reforms were intended to ease prison
overcrowding — and they have… But the changes were also supposed to help people
convicted of nonviolent crimes, by letting them serve their sentences close to
home in county jails with lots of education and training programs.
“It hasn’t worked out that way in
some urban counties. Jails built to hold people for days or weeks — awaiting
trial or serving short sentences for petty crimes — have strained to handle
long-term inmates, many with chronic medical and mental-health problems and
histories of violence.” Abbie Van Sickle and Manuel Villa writing for the May
24th Los Angeles Times.
Yet many jails today are even more
overcrowded than regional prisons, often lacking in medical and psychiatric
support systems (inadequate everywhere) that are much “better” in prisons built
for long-term housing. Violence in many urban jails has long-since passed the
breaking point. As case in point, one inmate confined for long-term
incarceration in a jail vs a prison:
“Ever since he stole his first car at
age 10, Cody Garland has spent much of his life behind bars. Now 35, he has
served time at eight different California prisons… But the hardest stint, he
says, was not in a state penitentiary. It was in a Sacramento County jail,
where in 2016 he was sentenced to serve eight years for burglary, identity
theft and other charges.
“Medical care at the jail was even
worse than in prison; untreated glaucoma left him legally blind, he says… Solitary
confinement — in a windowless room — was a common punishment; Garland says he
lost track of whether it was day or night during a spell in solitary and began
to hear voices.
“Mental-health help was hard to get,
he alleged, even after he started swallowing shards of metal and tried to hang
himself. He detailed the treatment in a lawsuit accusing the county of
subjecting inmates to inhumane conditions — a claim the county denies… ‘I’ve
done a lot of prison time,’ he says, ‘and this was the worst time I’d ever
done.’…
“Statewide, assaults on jailers
increased almost 90% from 2010, the year before prison downsizing began, to
2017, the most recent year for which there is complete data. Mental-health
cases, which had been declining in jails, have risen. County spending on
medicine for inmates has jumped (to almost $64 million in 2017 from $38 million
in 2010), and the cost of psychotropic medication has recently surged. Legal
challenges over inmate treatment have expanded to about a dozen county lockups.
“A spate of suicides… Deaths in
California jails jumped by 26% in the years after they started receiving
long-term inmates, peaking at 153 in 2014 before falling to 133 in 2017. That
year, California had 17.7 deaths per 10,000 inmates; Texas, which has the
second-largest jail population, had 13.2…
“California’s experiment in prison
downsizing has implications for states across the country as they try to cut
the size of their prison systems. Some, such as Texas, are tackling the issue
because of the high cost of locking people up, while others, such as Alabama,
are under pressure to relieve overcrowding and violence. And in many regions,
voters are concluding that prison populations, which include disproportionate
numbers of people of color, reflect outdated ‘tough on crime’ policies.” LA
Times. And richer municipalities (as in the Silicon Valley) often have vastly
superior local jails. It’s money combined with a long-term American proclivity
favoring incarceration.
For prisoners, it’s living hell, with
profound damage done to those incarcerated, particularly in those cities with
the worst and most overcrowded jails. As a follow-up, Cody Garland figured out
how to force a transfer to a state penitentiary: “Garland no longer spends his
days in the Sacramento jail. Since December, he has been living in a prison
medical facility in San Luis Obispo, where he says his health problems have
improved.
“How did he get transferred? In 2018,
he hit a sheriff’s deputy in the jail. Garland did not contest charges of
resisting an officer and assault likely to produce great bodily injury, a
felony… He begged his public defender to make sure that this time, he went to
prison… ‘They wanted to give me six months in jail,’ he recalled recently. ‘I
said I’d take two years if you’d just let me go to prison.’” LA Times. We
should be ashamed.
I’m Peter Dekom, and it seems that all
across the land there is this sweeping malaise decimating empathy, sympathy,
humanity and respect for our fellow human beings… me, mine and not them or
theirs.
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