Prisonlandia, part 14

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We Don’t Need to Lock up Everybody 

Problems are not known or cared about until they show up on our doorstep and affect us personally. This is especially true about incarceration and how it affects our citizens and society as a whole. Did you know that despite China having a bigger population than the U.S., LESS people are incarcerated by their Communist government than here in our free country? Violent crimes and crimes where individual’s rights are clearly and directly violated, certainly need to be addressed. However, those that involve addictions, clear mental health issues, or simple “possession” issues, should not be herded up like cattle, demonized in their community, and tossed into Prisonlandia with ridiculous sentences. The U.S. is a country of laws indeed, but we’ve lost our way. What type of country have we become when we begin to lock away people for simply offending the moral sensibilities of empty suit politicians, legislators, and faceless, out of date “community standards?” Two terms that have always made me laugh (even when I was a cop) are “community standards” and “reasonable man”. Who decides what these are? I remember the district where I patrolled had several different “communities” – some rich, some poor, some white, some black, each had different “community standards” of what was acceptable or not. Being reasonable in one may not equate to reasonableness in the others, yet this blanket of moral standards is cast over them all. This is not how criminal justice was meant to be. Is a reasonable man one who has blind obedience to the law or a man who can apply common sense and empathy. I have two stories to illustrate my point.

I once patrolled the area near a mall on the southside of Houston and every weekend we would get calls about shoplifters who had been detained and were requesting an officer’s presence. I received a call one day about two shoplifters being held at a large department store at the mall. Upon arriving, I walked in and expected to see a couple of teenagers or maybe someone who was strung out on meth but instead I saw an elderly couple. If I recall correctly, they were in their seventies and did not fit the normal profile. The woman had concealed a bottle of perfume and attempted to leave without paying and her husband was simply with her during this attempt. The perfume was over fifty dollars which at the time was a class B misdemeanor and meant a trip to jail. If the amount was under fifty in situations like this, a citation could usually be written. Neither the man or the woman had a criminal history, and to be honest, I felt a little messed up about having to potentially arrest this woman. Then her husband told me more about why they were there. He was stationed in Germany during World War II when he met his wife. They eventually married and she returned with him to the States. The name of the German town where they met so many years ago was also the name of the perfume which she had tried to shoplift. They said that they had wanted to do something “daring” that made them feel young again. I was captivated by their story and observed how inseparable they were. What was I to do? There simply was no way I was hauling this old lady off to jail. I conferred with the manager and he agreed to a discounted price on the stolen perfume and so I wrote a citation for $49.99 and released the couple.

The second story involves my time working with the school district police department early on in my law enforcement career. I was patrolling a campus that was located in the inner-city area of Houston when I caught a 17-year-old kid spray painting on a building. I detained him and asked him if he knew that putting graffiti on a school, church, or government building was a felony. He was not aware. After talking to the kid for a while and determining that he had no criminal record, I conferred with the school principal (because she would be the complainant in the case) and ran an idea by her. I suggested that instead of charging the kid with a felony and ruining his life, give him a second chance and allow him to clean it up with some soap, water, and scrubbing. To my surprise, the principal did not like this idea and was concerned about the “image” that would be sent by having a young man doing physical labor in public view and instead she wanted him to be arrested. So, I did my job and arrested the young man and then filed charges on him. Another example of someone who didn’t need to go to jail.

I always tried to be fair and utilize the little bit of discretion I had as an officer, especially with people who had no criminal history. Despite my own personal and off-duty problems, I always tried to be fair and understanding and utilize some common-sense to all parties involved. This is one reason I was so bitter and disenfranchised when I was raked over the coals so ferociously – but in the end I came to understand – I knew better than anyone else, and with great knowledge and authority comes greater responsibility. With an acceptance of accountability, or without, we simply lock up too many people in this country today. The long-term effects of locking up masses of people, in many instances, far outweighs any benefit that “society” receives from the person's continued incarceration. 

Random Quotables:

It's how we live
How we live that defines us
What we change
And what we leave behind
You know you can't
You can't take it with you
 Your day will come
 It's just a matter of time

         Five Finger Death Punch – from their song “Matter of Time”

 

Did You Know?

There are 250,000 people incarcerated in Texas Jails and Prisonlandia. This is more than the total number of people confined in Germany, France, Japan, and the U.K. combined. There are over 700,000 in Prisonlandia, jails, on probation or parole, or other forms of community supervision. – Scott Henson, Grits for Breakfast (blog)

 

In 1980 – 503,600 incarcerated in the entire United States (Stephen Raphael, Benefits and Cost of the Prison Boom, 2009)

In 2015 – 2,172,800 incarcerated in the U.S. (including parole, probation – nearly 7,000,000) This is more than any other country on Earth.

2024 update – 1.9 million incarcerated in the U.S.

  -3.67 million on parole, probation

  - 5.5 million total

(Wendy Sawyer and Pete Wagner – Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie, 2023 www.Prisonpolicy.org/factsheets/pie2020_allimages.pdf)

With just 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. incarcerates nearly 25% of the world’s Prisonlandialites (White House Council of Economic Advisors, Economic perspectives on Incarceration)

Mass incarceration is tied to the increased use of plea bargaining to avoid a lengthy, costly, and time-consuming trial process. Leverage in favor of the prosecutors, which encourage a defendant to accept a plea, comes from the fear of conviction from a statute with an unreasonable and disproportionate sentencing structure such as 5-99.

Harsh penalties lead defendants to accept plea agreements in lieu of exercising their constitutional right to trial – the hallmark of the American system of justice.

One reason high plea rates persist, despite penalties, is that overworked and under-paid defense attorney’s may prefer the brevity of plea bargains to time consuming trials, leading them to disloyally advise clients that their chances are worse than they are.

(Walter I. Goncalves, Jr., How Much Time Time am I Looking At? www.law.georgetown.edu/american-criminal-law-review/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2022/04/59-2_Goncalves-How_Much_Time.pdf)

 

Since coming to Prisonlandia and having seen things on both sides of the law, I quickly determined that while policing has its issues along with corrections on the opposite end, these are not our primary areas of concern. The root of the troubling issues lies within our courts and reckless legislatures. Author John Pfaff claims that prosecutorial discretion is the single largest cause of mass incarceration and is responsible for the expansive growth in felony convictions since the 1970’s. (John Pfaff, Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform, 2017). In addition, it is our elective representatives who propose bills with draconian-like punishments in the name of law and order and political posturing.