California’s Broken Parole and Probation System
And what was it that had her spending so much time behind bars? Morris is a thief. Not the worst of criminals, to be sure, but still a thief, one who was undeterred by whatever modest punishments were meted out to her early in her life of crime. For no one, and I mean absolutely no one, goes to prison for a first-time shoplifting offense. And in Los Angeles, it takes several priors for any judge to even consider sentencing a shoplifter to prison. “Morris,” says the L.A. Times, “said she has spent the last decade bouncing in and out of jail and prison for shoplifting or violating her parole by not taking her medication.”
And here the writer, Jason Song, demonstrates a level of credulity one hopes is rare among journalists. No one, and I mean no one, goes to jail, much less state prison, for failing to take his medication, unless that failure somehow contributes to a person’s decision to commit a crime.
No, Morris is just a thief, plain and simple. “She first went to jail in 1999,” says the Times, “for stealing clothes from a Target store. Ten years later, she said, she was arrested for the same offense: taking baby clothes from an Old Navy in Manhattan Beach.”
The reference to baby clothes is perhaps another lame attempt to arouse sympathy in the reader. Were the clothes intended for Morris’s own baby? If so, who was left looking after the child while Morris was off serving her four terms in prison?
The first four times . . .
As it happened, the LAPD officers called on Morris at her group home while it was being visited by Los Angeles County supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who took offense to the officers’ actions and expressed as much to LAPD chief Charlie Beck. “It’s not cost-effective,” Ridley-Thomas told the Times, “particularly when there was no imminent threat of danger.”
Perhaps it isn’t, but neither was the system that allowed Morris to go on helping herself to other people’s property year after year. Heaven knows how much she lifted before she was so unfortunate as to be nabbed on those four separate occasions.
Morris claims she was so upset by the visit from the police that she went back to living on the streets for some time before returning to the group home. “It kind of set me back,” she told the Times.
Boo hoo. Morris, like many other released felons, will have to come to terms with the fact that the days of bamboozling her overworked paroled officer are over, and that from now on police officers, people who are happy to get off their keisters and out of the office, will be looking in on her to make sure she minds her manners.
It’s not a job local police asked for, but if it makes people like Morris a little nervous about taking things without paying for them, if she’s deterred to the point she is spared a fifth stint in prison, maybe it will prove to be worth the trouble.
Many points can be made about this hopeless conundrum. I’ve worked inside the razor wire for 14 years as a physician and have been able to view a lot of the same stuff as Mr. Dunphy.
Ms. Morris is apparently an habitual criminal, and any number of incarcerations is not likely to change her. So society has to decide whether they wish to lock her up for 30 years at great financial cost, or just let her out to continue her string of minor thefts.
Drug and and alcohol offenders aren’t reformed by prison either. All that is achieved by locking them up for a few years is that it gets them off the street for a few years. In my mind this is not worthwhile, but others can legitimately disagree.
Parole and probation needs to be beefed up and brought into the 21st century, wich most nonviolent offenders being managed in the community with more staff and greater use of electronic monitoring. These felons need job training, jobs, and participation in Faith-based programs. Faith based programs are more successful than alternatives, though they are fought tooth-and-nail by the liberal left, lest–God Forbid!–that anyone become a Christian in the process.
The best chance we have at avoiding re-offending for prisoners is for them to be released into a faith-based group of supporters, and they need a job! The widespread use of criminal background checks, and the use of a positive background check as a universal disqualifier for hiring, has created a large, unemployable frustrated group of people who want to work and do right but are stymied by not being able to get a decent job. Clearly an embezzler should not be allowed to work as a bookkeeper, or a pedophile able to work in daycare–but to disallow a drunk driver or minor drug user from getting to work in food service or other blue collar work doesn’t make sense to me.
Many of us cut our teeth in the Nixon-era “war on drugs”,”war on crime” and law-and-order movements which favored an harsh approach to law enforcement and incarceration. Well guess what: it has not worked. All we have done in Texas at least is to lock up more people for longer periods of time, build more prisons, think up more “enhancements” to criminal charges so that people can be put away even longer. Parole and probation are understaffed and underfunded and absolutely LOVE to re-incarcerate people for the most minor technical violations.
The Conservative approach to these problems has shifted away from the “Tuff on crime” mentality toward finding solutions that work. I would invite interested readers to visit the rightoncrime.com website for deeper exploration of more right-of-center ideas.
What works is attitude change. An attitude is a predisposition to act. There are many ways of establishing that predisposition, but, without it, recidivism is inevitable. Almost always a period of segregation from society, including a rebirthing and maturation process is necessary.We retreat to the womb and then re-raise the client as he/she should have been raised- with an extreme emphasis on morality. Moral people do not commit crimes. Amoral folks are the worst. Penal institutions at all levels need to be so focused. But it cannot ever happen, because our legislators, responsible for establishing such a system, are, almost without exception, amoral themselves. Do you want to reduce crime meaningfully? Then elect moral legislators.
“So society has to decide whether they wish to lock her up for 30 years at great financial cost, or just let her out to continue her string of minor thefts.”
A great deal of crime is associated with drug addiction. Up here in Oregon an addict with a $100 a day habit has to steal $1000 worth of property to make that $100 (10cents on the dollar for fencing). So that works out to $365,000 in property loss every year while the miscreant commits his “minor thefts.” And then we can factor in the approximately $4000 it costs to process this criminal for each and every arrest, multiplied by the number of arrests over the course of a year. If she is lucky and only gets arrested 6 times a year, that’s another $24,000. So we spend from $365,000 to $389,000 to keep this criminal out on the street for a year, not even counting all the ancillary costs such as welfare, food stamps, medical care, and social services. Now ask yourself if it isn’t cheaper to keep the criminal in jail at a cost of $25K versus the $365K plus it costs to leave them out on the street.
A drug addict wouldn’t have to pay $100/day but for the WOD.
No, Randy, he could stay loaded all day every day, and we could spend 25-30 K yearly just feeding and sheltering him while he drove around town, in a daze, mowing down pedestrians and, sans inhibitions, committing all sorts of nasty crimes- like raping your wife, for instance. We would have to pay his Medicaid, total free healthcare bills, too; an OD call and hospitalization shouldn’t cost much more than 10 or 15 K; small change to you? Do you want your appliances repaired by a loady? How about your home security system? Going to hire a loady babysitter? Want to deal with a loady pharmacist- think he might accidentally get your prescription right? And when your doctor picks up his scalpel, its ok by you if he takes a couple of hits first, right? And, you get to pay his taxes for him, because no sane employer will hire him. He occupies space, consumes oxygen, makes messes and trouble and lucy you gets to blow his nose and wipe his butt for him. May you get what you want!
I read your response to the LA Times article and I have to disagree. I respect that you served “inside the wire”, but your job as a physician is totally different than that of a correctional officer. You might see some horrible stuff in the confines of a medical ward, but that pales in comparison with what a CO sees, does or has to deal with on a daily basis.
I am assigned to deal with these parolees day in and day out. They lie to CDCR re; there addresses they are going to parole to, they lie to law enforcement who are task to verify their address and they often continue their life of crime and lie to the taxpayer that has to spend enormous amounts of time, funds and energy to monitor them. We (Police) have a duty to protect the public and find out where the parolees are laying their heads at night.
I will do a parole/probation check early in the morning and often catch them for a new offense, guns, drugs stolen property, etc, etc. (Bad Choice, but there choice) Then they are sent back into the system on a new open charge.
As for Pamela, I can tell you what exactly happen. . The big bad LAPD shows up and she is detained, not arrested and yes if no one understands (parole/probation) it is a continuation of your incarceration and the person is subject to warrantless search. She got upset after the search and used that as an excuse to hit the streets and hit the pipe. After tripping out for a few days, her family finally convinced her to go back into treatment, if not she would be returned to prison
The search is witness by Mark Ridley-Thomas. Big deal, MRT, if he was so concern with Pamela he should use some of the money he wanted to spend on remodeling his office a few years ago and spend it on these poor people who never had a chance.
Such hypocrites, I am tired of the politicians who only care about themselves and seeking their next public welfare job (new post) I am tired of the whining and complaining public who want us to do something and when we do, they bite the hand the helps them and most of all I am tired of the way law enforcement has too apologize for doing their jobs.
I am dedicated to the people, but I can only take so much and Finally, Prison is no joke and drugs are usually a choice (poor one) but still a choice people often make. Why should the person who does everything right in life, pay for people who make bad choices. I am rambling and I will leave it at that.
P.S. Captain Tingerides did not owe her an apology and should not have given her one. Let her take her medicine.
I was interested to note that Ms. Morris was jugged for stealing, specifically “baby clothes”, but no mention was made of whether or not she actually has a baby.
Also, if her first offense was stealing baby clothes, and her latest one, several years later, was as well, either she has more than one child, or she simply has a strange fixation on baby clothing.
Add in the reference to her “not taking her medication”, and I rather get the impression that in this case, we’re dealing with someone suffering from mental illness, rather than just a general idea that breaking the law is their privilege.
(The default position of the average habitual criminal; they understand that what they do is illegal, but simply believe the law- any law- does not apply to them. The same phenomenon can be observed in many politicians, especially of the “social reformer” school.)
More than anything else, this may once more prove (if further proof is even needed) that the “mainstreaming” of the mentally ill is not merely a failure, it is a disservice to the sufferers as well as society. Putting someone who cannot relate to reality out on the street and expecting them to take their meds on schedule, and thinking that that will make everything good, is itself delusional thinking.
Unreformable criminals aren’t the only ones who need to be institutionalized. The incurable mentally ill need it, too- for their own protection, in addition to society’s.
clear ether
eon
Good point, and correct I think, on the mental illness. In my experience in criminal justice, true and serious mental illness is actually somewhat rare. Most of what I see is people trying to use being “mentally ill” as an excuse to mitigate their crime; they really aren’t mentally ill at all. I agree that for many schizophrenics long term institutionalization is the best approach.
“More than anything else, this may once more prove (if further proof is even needed) that the “mainstreaming” of the mentally ill is not merely a failure, it is a disservice to the sufferers as well as society.”
The state of the Democratic Party and what it has done to the country in the past few years is ample proof of your point.
We threw the baby out with the mental health bathwater in the ’70s. Prior to the mental health reforms of the ’70s (in most states) two relatives and one county judge could put you away for life with no right of habeas corpus, and it was often done for nefarious purposes. Those old laws were done away with, but what has replaced them is a hodge-podge that basically will not allow any institutionalization unless there is a demonstrable threat to the person or others. Unfortunately, that threat is often demonstrated in an act of violence and only after the bodies are recovered is the person institutionalized.
I’ve spent enough time around law enforcement and corrections to barely even believe in “mental illness.” Yes, there are some organic maladies such as schitzophrenia, maybe legitimate bi-polar, etc., but most “craziness” is attributable to the fact that society has been bludgeoned by the left into accepting all sorts of bizarre behavior in the name of tolerance and civil liberties; most of the “mentally ill” are “mentally ill” because they can be and not only get away with it but are rewarded for it. I have enough experience close to home with modern parenting to know that much of what is now called ADHD and even autism used to be called BRAT and the children rather than having an illness are simply feral, and their behavior does not improve as they get older, hence lots more prison beds are in our future.
Art, can you provide some examples of people being hospitalized for nefarious purposes under the old system? I’ve looked long and hard for examples of this. As late as 1963, an ACLU representative at a Congressional hearing was unable to give even ONE example of such.
I don’t doubt that this happened occasionally. A .1% failure rate in a system with 550,000 inmates at its peak in the 1950s would mean 550 improperly committed people, and any system with a .1% failure rate would be impressively good. But I have searched court decisions, read books by those making such claims (Prisoners of Psychiatry, for example), and talked to people that worked in the mental hospital system in the bad old days, and it does not seem to be the case that this was common.
State mental hospitals were crowded, often inhumane places. The doctors who ran them seem to have tried very hard to remove patients who were not genuinely mentally ill.
Most such examples are apocryphal, mainly drawn from (bad) fiction. It must be said that the traditional trope of “getting the heiress committed so the relatives can get the estate money” was not entirely unknown- in England and on the Continent before 1900.
U.S. laws on involuntary committal were written specifically to prevent stunts like that.
cheers
eon
I know lots is anecdote and much may well be apochryphal, but there really wasn’t a lot of legal protection for someone that the “community” had decided “weren’t right.” My only direct knowlege is from the six or seven months I spent working as an attendent at a state mental institution in ’70; you’ll do most anything to pay your way through school, or at least you would in those days. I saw lots of longhairs busted for drugs, vagrancy – remember that charge? – or some sort of thing that indicated the cops or somebody important didn’t like you who’d been diverted by the court for a “psychiatric evaluation” to see if they were sane enough to stand trial for some trumped up crap. Any way you slice it, that’s a life sentence without possibility of parole if the pshrink – who was probably a carpenter back in in Cuba – didn’t like you. I had a social worker “friend” who counselled a lot of cocky young punks who were sure that they were going to beat the rap that they’d best get over the cockiness and learn to behave or they’d never get out to face that rap.
You seem to be describing people whose lawyers sought a psychiatric evaluation to keep them from being tried for their crime–not people who were civilly committed.
Notice how this cop-driven hysteria fixates on a genuine thief that everybody actually believes should be locked up, and the key thrown away? Why can’t this be done? Why are caseloads of parole officers so huge and swollen? Why can’t a low level thief find a longterm room at the gray bar hotel?
The vast majority of “Felons” are harmless, non-violent drug offenders that are the root of this out of control unmanageable police/prison complex. The War on Drugs is the epic disaste that the police and prison guard unions continue to rabidly support, that has caused this wholesale indigestible mess.
Two cities in California this week voted to use a meat-axe approach to swollen public employee pension programs, the worst offenders being the so-called “public safety” employees. Ultimately, bringing public employee pensions back down to earth is a good start to this problem.
Ask yourself: Why does the country with the world’s largest and most grotesque incarceration rate find itself unable to incarcerate real criminals?
“Vast majority”: Can you provide a source for this claim? I could believe a majority of felons might be there for drug offenses, but even then, I’m skeptical. They certainly aren’t a majority of prison inmates, and “vast majority” sounds like hyperbole.
Obviously the current system isn’t doing much to deter her. I suggest something that might. She wouldn’t have done this in Singapore four times; her back would have made it very clear to her that being flogged ONCE was more than enough.
Sometimes corporal punishment is the only way to get through to people.
What ever happened to the American who was flogged in Singapore several years ago? I can’t remember what he’d done but I believe it was pretty minor, like jaywalking. Did he ever re-offend in either Singapore or America?
Logic thought. Has no place in current society.
AD
Typo alert:
As it happened, the LAPD officers called on Morris at her group home while it was being visited by Los Angeles County supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who took offense to the officers’ actions and expressed as much to LAPD chief Charlie Beck. “It’s not cost-effective,” Ridley-Scott told the Times, “particularly when there was no imminent threat of danger.”
Somehow, supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas becomes Ridley-Scott in the next sentence. An understandable slip in Tinseltown
Fixed. Thanks for the heads up.
Dunphy maybe you should stop believing everything a parolee says, are you an actual street cop? As parole agent not officer we are required to make montly home calls and I am never to busy if an officer calls about a case. You tend to over generalize and I could tell you stories about lazy cops but I realize not all cops are lazy. While parole has it’s issues most of that stems from the idiots in sacramento and not from us agents. We are overloaded with BS paperwork and most of us work overtime to get our work done without being paid. If your not clear on something regarding parole shoot me an email and I would be more than happy to clear it up for you.
As a retired parole officer,I can tell you that very few people in prison for felony drug possession are “first time offenders”. The drug bust may be their first felony, but they will have a long string of misdemeanor convictions for which they never served any jail time. This is because county lockups are even more overcrowded than state prisons. All those free rides for misdemeanors teaches people that the system is a joke and encourages them to start committing felonis. And in my state, parole officers are frustrated because a parolee can commit a lot of technical violations before there is any real consideration given to sending them back to prison. It often takes a new felony arrest to end their parole. The parolees know this, that they can get away with quite a bit and they just learn more disrespect for the system. As for the calls of more use of electronic monitoring, parolees have a nasty habit of cutting off their ankle monitor and throwing it and all the associated equipment in the garbage. That is $5000 out of the taxpayer’s pocket. My solution? Forced vasectomies and tubal ligations for a second felony conviction. Dry up the source of future felons. And yes, I am a fascist/nazi/knuckledragger/whatever.
Sort of makes you yearn for the days of a long drop and a short rope. There has to be a happy medium of deterrence and punishment. I’m guessing that a few (thousand) stretched necks in public might have a bit more of a deterrence factor than the ‘humane’ lethal injections so favored by the bleeding hearts.
“Case loads are often so overwhelming that many parole and probation officers are content to process the mountains of paperwork attendant to their jobs rather than take the time to determine if their charges are actually abiding by the conditions imposed on them.”
What is the nature of these mountains of paperwork? Is there any possibility of doing away with some of this paperwork or automating some of it so that it can be done more quickly and efficiently? That has the potential of dramatically increasing the amount of oversight parole officers can give to their “clients”.
The mountains of paper work are designed by administrators to protect the organization from liability in our vastly litigious society. Rather than less there will be more and more and more.
The paperwork is designed to protect the states and the counties from liability in the event of law suits in our highly litigious society. There will not be less paperwork. There will be more and more and more.
Sparky, I work as a Parole Agent in Los Angeles. Due to litigation from inmate/parolee rights groups, there are many reports which we are required to complete. We are audited by these groups and was can be disciplined and even terminated if we fail to complete them. The Division of Adult Parole Operations is concerned with the mounds of paperwork and not with public safety.
As Elle states, the paperwork is increasing and it does seem that the administrators do increase paperwork because of liability issues.
The writer of the article seems to imply that they LAPD Officers can do a better job supervising parolees. They can’t if they are required to complete all of the paperwork we have to(Probation Officers also). It’s not just rolling up to a parolee’s residence and doing a compliance search.
I go to my parolee’s homes one to two times per month, by my self, not with a team of officers backing me up, unless we have an organized team for searches.
In my parole unit, we often go with other parole agents and LAPD Officers and conduct compliance searches which have yielded much contraband such as weapons and ammunition. These are conducted at the discretion of agents who must complete any paperwork that is due (Most reports have time constraints) and find the extra time to spend a day doing these searches.
Personal experience: Had two parolees steal tens of thousands of dollars from my business, burglarizing it on almost a nightly routine for six months, stealing checks and forging them in their account. One was charged after a two month “investigation”, only after we hired bounty hunters to find her on our own dime, and STILL the local police refused to arrest her and threatened to arrest our bounty hunters! We had to call in the state police to have her arrested and stop the financial arterial spray. And call her parole officer with her exact location every day for a month before they would issue a warrant, which wasn’t even issued until she was arrested by the State Police.
The local police often refuse to take property crime reports. Conflicts with their primary duty of managing the underground drug economy, apparently.
The second guy, on parole for several counts of burglary and forgery and other financial crimes in at least two states, was never even charged let alone arrested (Several of the forged checks were written out to him and cashed in his bank account. Maybe it is just me, but that seems to be a pretty good description of a suspect).
However, upon finding marijuana in his house…..BOY OH BOY!!! Now THAT got everyone excited and the system twisted itself inside out dramatically saved the day and he was arrested and did five days in jail for a few tiny pieces of weed!
Gosh, I feel safer now!
Anyone else sick of the whining that people simply cannot be expected to follow the law?
You want drugs legalized? Campaign on it. Until that happens, quit yer bitching about people caught breaking the law getting punished for it. They knew what they were doing was illegal, and did it anyway. Decisions, meet consequences.
Anyone else sick of the whining that people simply cannot be expected to follow the law?
I bet you said the same things about those who opposed and broke Jim Crow laws too.
Besides nobody should be punished for breaking an immoral law. Drug laws are immoral because they call non-violent actions “crimes”. They are unjust because they make a legal distinction between alcohol vs. other mood altering substances.
My guess is that you are pro-WOD which makes you pro-immorality and pro-injustice and pro-tyranny. Your parents must me proud.
Does anyone remember the news last year when the PRC (Peoples Republic of California) announced that they intended to release 46,000 from the prison system? And the people they release are being monitored? No sympathy. My sympathy is directed at the non political elite, non rich and non movie star types that are honest law abiding taxpayers that get trained but are consistently denied the CCW. And how many of the offenders released are violent offenders?
So, since, I presume, additional police officers are not being hired to take on what was formerly probation and parole functions, (otherwise there would be no savings) however understaffed and badly executed those probation functions were, exactly what traditional community policing functions are being sacrificed to supervise the additional cons on the street? Surely the police have reports to file and daily activity boxes to check off when hooking and booking probation violators? I gather given the limited resources to save real money some policing performance goals, less traffic enforcement and ticket writing for example, will change in order to enforce good conduct among parolees? And since the jails are now over filled with former state inmates like a backed up sewer plugged with maxi pads, are their waiting lists and cell rationing criteria to be met before the cop qua probation officer can book a cell for new probation violator? Maybe a public flogging and a day in the stocks are in order rather than the sixty thousand dollar a year unit cell cost for one probation violator?
Axel Munthe was a turn of the last century Swedish Doctor who restored Villa San Michele on Capri. He was a classic 19th Century liberal. Mind your own business and try to do good in the world. His autobiography is a treasure of stories about all sorts of things. And his prescription for dealing with habitual criminals like Ms Morris is Hmmmmm interesting. After three convictions the offender would get the needle. Humanely.
What’s not to like re sensible solutions?
AD
There are a lot more zombies coming up behind Morris. More all the time. There is no system yet to be invented which will bring them to account, especially since we are expecting the same system which created and funded them to correct the probem.
Sloppy reporter mentions nothing about the greedy 1%?
Considering the climate of California, isn’t it time to take a page from Sheriff Arpaio’s playbook and institute tent city prisons for non-violent offenders? When you consider how unpleasant they can be and how, relatively, inexpensively they can be run it would appear to be a better option than releasing them so they can commit more crimes.
If there was a sufficient number of these then first offenses wouldn’t need to be ignored for lack of space. If every time a criminal committed a crime they were incarcerated and served their entire sentence, they would spend so much less time on the streets, reducing their ability to commit more crimes.
Also, California needs a three strikes law with true life imprisonment. That should help in both deterence and in removing habitual criminals from were they can continue their predations.
Condition crooks to adopt moral principles,(love your neighbor as yourself, etc.), and crime disappears. But legislators won’t do this, because they are not moral persons. The cure is apparent.
I am a retired California parole agent and I can tell you the reason the parole system failed is because politicians and ambitious managers didn’t want it to work. When agents held parolees accountable for their violations i.e. returned them to custody it was deemed “too expensive”.
Lying about the risk, officials asserted that violations could be met with “community sanctions” such as compulsory treatment and counseling WITHOUT increased danger to the community. The current Director of the Parole Division and the Director of the California Department of Corrections are continuing to tell this lie even as we speak.They are reducing the rate of recidivism by simply declining to pursue return to prison.
County District Attorneys do the same thing when they decline to prosecute crimes in favor of “Diversion” or probation with only a few months in custody-even for violent felonies. DAs would “leave it to parole” while parole would apply “community sanctions”.Most police officers and parole agents know this is dangerous nonsense but most finally give up and share their frustration among themselves.
The latest gambit is returning the parole system to the counties as a “cost cutting” solution. Of course, given the financial crisis in the counties, citizens are essentially on their own under this system even as the politicians labor to take away their right to bear arms.
What should happen is that habitual non-violent criminals should be put on work farms where they can earn their keep and be protected from violent predators. Conditions should be tolerable enough that they have an incentive to behave themselves in a controlled environment and be productive instead of being confined in a REAL prison with sociopaths. There are plenty of jobs that could be done that would earn their keep. People may not like it, but one of the best would be to be put to work sorting and recycling garbage.
They could grow their own marijuana as far as I’m concerned, we just need to take the burden of their behavior and maintenance off the backs of law-abiding citizens.
What is actually going to happen is that we are going to continue down our present course until the country is bankrupt and then the government that arises from the wreckage will apply the above remedy without the concern that conditions should be tolerable or the non-violent be protected from the sociopaths. But it is useless to see the future and screech at it.
– should be tried again (see the film “Unchained”; everyone knows its famous song).
To Fred M; But habitual criminals ARE sociopaths.They are absolutely selfish persons and easily meet the diagnostic criteria for psychopathy. One thing we must NOt do is provide them with an environment in which their sociopathy is nourished at public expense.
When the obamathugs take over; or a revolutionary government does, both will apply a zero tolerance policy to disruptive, unproductive persons and either gulag or execute them. Gulaging is more expensive than genocide. And the recidivism rate for the executed is zero.
Eventually, when one group after another has been used to kill off the target group of the moment, the all-white elite of the New World Order will eliminate all minorities and rule over an all-white slave class with closed economic and military systems. Check out Servando Gonzalez and see what you think.
I’m a cashier. Shoplifters take the bread out of my mouth. The less “inventory shrinkage” (shoplifting and vandalism) takes place, the more I get paid – it’s as simple as that.
Trouble is, if these thieves are in prison, or even on parole or probation, MY tax dollars go to keeping them under surveillance.
I know it’s un-Christian of me to say this, but sometimes I wish I could just beat the @$#!#% out of these shoplifters, so that they’d get the idea not to mess with us again.
Habitual criminals overwhelmingly DON’T CARE in getting caught or serving time.
Today’s criminals are more and more like the, ‘Snoats brothers’ via the movie, ‘Raising Arizona’ – played by Goodman & Forsythe, respectively.
The more overwhelmed the parole system becomes, the more lax it has become.
There is next to NO FEAR of prison for many offenders. They know they’ll be out soon.
If not, they’ve a remedial job, ’3 hots and a cot’, cable t.v., weight room, library, ‘man-cave’ amenities in some instances, therapy/ group therapy sessions, undeserving empathy etc., – caveats many absconder’s don’t possess outside of prison.
Heck many possess a warrant(s) for $1k-5k warrant(s), the-officer on-scene WILL OFTEN let the person(s) go because the warrant’s for another county!
The parole system sucks, jail is lax in most instances and most police officer’s pick and choose who to arrest, harass. Often times the expectedly dopey pothead.
When seconds count..
HELP HELP we’re being repressed!
Sure kick ‘em loose early with no job skills and probably not interested in learning any new ones, other then what put them in jail to begin with…give them a slap on the wrist every time they step out of line rather then throwing them back in to where they just came from, why should they care if they go straight or not? We have now passed over that line where literally the inmates ARE running the asylum.
The penal system and the “problem” of repeat offenders is symptomatic of the entire direction of this country. We are in a dire state because an overwhelming number of people in this country believe they are entitled; entitled to welfare, entitled to live off their parents, entitled to steal, party with illegal substances, act out their aggressions, and use anything they chose as an excuse (off their meds, addiction, parents were mean to them, the economy, global warming, whatever). The state keeps reinforcing this idea to the detriment of those of us who work and contribute to society. California’s realignment is amounting to the de-criminalization of crime in the state. Property crime felonies (and a fair number of violent crimes) suddenly do not merit prison time, parole violations merit only a few months in jail at most. New crimes are being reduced in the courts so as to keep offenders out of prison and/or jail (its overcrowded, you know). Those released under realignment, according to the authorities need “treatment” and they will be all better, if they continue to offend, MORE TREATMENT! This is insane. Any parent (or pet owner) knows that to correct bad behavior in children (or animals) they need swift and clear sanctions. Over the years all manner of treatments and sanctions have been tried with offenders and the only sure way to prevent crime is to lock up the criminals. Not to mention, if you commit a crime you deserve punishment (punishment has become a dirty word in the criminal justice lexicon). We have to accept that a fair number of our citizens (and non-citizens for that matter) will not be willing to live within the laws of society. Prisons are necessary. Fair citizens need only bide their time; as crime explodes in California over the next few year the pendulum will swing back. Unfortunately, a lot of victims will be left in the wake of realignment and some will never be the same for their losses. I recommend to all my friends and family; alarm your house, lock up your valuables, be vigilant and aware of your surroundings, and stay informed.