There's an inmate in LA County jail who has been there 9 years awaiting trial on attempted murder. He is completely and totally institutionalized. A very nice guy but intimidating.
Cops can arrest you for any reason, and if you can't make bail, then they place you in jails with convicted violent felons, some on murder trials.
In LA jails, you have to be racist. Depending on your pod and program, you have special requirements.
You often have to fight, especially if you are black or Hispanic. If there's a brawl inside the pod, you have to fight other races or you will be beaten by your own.
I sat in a tiny room for 11 hours with 50 inmates, half of which had face tattoos and were gang members. A room where inmates had been beaten to death and the others just cover up the cameras.
Multiple times I wasn't called to court, they were "dry runs". Mental torture and real risk required just for due process.
These types of systems only create more criminals.
The deputies act like psychopaths, taunting and roughing up inmates. But not as bad since now the FBI has cameras watching them.
The person who interceded in my misdemeanor case and put me in jail was the former head of California Homeland Security.
His lawyer, also a former federal prosecutor, was in every court appearance lobbying the prosecutor. He also represented the Chief of Police, the City Council and the Sheriff.
Their boss is a secretive billionaire whose former lawyer became the new Supreme Court Justice this year after he lobbied He is a very powerful person who hires former federal officials as political mercenaries.
This all happened because they wanted to protect a wealthy sex predator. In 2-weeks, the Homeland official is actually testifying for the sex predator for his civil trial. He is presumably testifying against my credibility.
We have no rehabilitation or actual corrections when you are essentially sent to a crime university and network with criminals.
I'll never understand why when you are kids and get in trouble, they separate you. When you are an adult criminal, they put you in with other criminals and create more criminals.
Recidivism is high in those types of situations, in addition to how records are never cleared for good behavior. We have a serious corrections problem that does little in the way of correcting by grouping everyone so tight.
Sincere question -- how do we spot things like this?
Let's pretend for a moment that I'm a relatively competent programmer with small amounts of disposable income to spend on hobbies, such as running algorithms over government datasets. (Okay, that's a weird one -- but I think it's good to apply my craft towards politics.) I know a lot about making computers scan through large sets of data looking for patterns, and some about making websites and whatnot.
I normally don't think technology does much for political problems, but this one legitimately sounds like we should be applying fraud-detection style algorithms to the names that appear in court records, looking for abnormalities. (Heck, we should probably look for all kinds of irregularities, not just in the pattern of names.)
Identifying the problem doesn't magically solve it, but it sounds like being able to assemble subtle cases out of thousands of documents across hundreds of jurisdictions actually would provide utility towards addressing this.
It doesn't stop the corruption directly, but it shines a pretty bright light on it. And it allows groups looking to tackle it head on to focus their efforts on litigating, instead of document finding or figuring out who the culprits are.
The algorithms are part of the problem. Many states use a point system to assign risk and determine bail amounts. Some might be arbitrary, others based on existing statistics, but in this attempt to be blind and fair, you're either adding bias by the humans who make the algorithms or you create a self-defeating system because those stats are used incorrectly, pushing inmates into recidivism and essentially building a feedback loop. US prisons are a self perpetuating system.
In the particular case of the OP, if this is all true, it looks like they tried to call someone out who was very powerful. When corruption runs that deep, it's very difficult for change to occur. For every story that ends up like the one behind the movie Changeling, there are probably a dozen or more of people who tried to do the right thing and end up silenced in prison or mental hospitals forever.
Troy Davis was executed, even after former President Jimmy Carter spoke up and called for his case to be reexamined.
The main problem is that most people in American society don't care what happens to prisoners. Don't be surprised if you employ these techniques only to discover nobody lifts a finger.
That said, this would be a project I'd be interested in contributing to. If you set it up, shoot me an email.
I'll be honest: I suspect that this is actually quite common and I have absolutely no idea how to fix it.
But I suspect that much like homelessness, step 0 is gathering an accurate, systemic level picture so we can even understand what we're trying to fix. Targeted treatments and good intentions aren't working -- we need a system level mechanism.
Ed:
I replied to a cached copy; leaving in case anyone raises the same point.
Local elections. Local police puts local folks into local jails. County jail is run by local people.
So the question becomes, what is the gamut of these jails? Are there facilities that are run well, on time, safely, etc..? What separates them from these hellholes? What's the context? What's the difference between those counties?
There's an inmate in LA County jail who has been there 9 years awaiting trial on attempted murder. He is completely and totally institutionalized. A very nice guy but intimidating.
If he didn't go in a killer, he sure as hell should be ready to take a life by now. If someone robbed me of 9 years of my life, I'd make it my mission to rob them of any joy in their life.
You mean, you are going to be politically active? "They" is an abstract entity, a set of rules agreed upon by your community - in essence: you agreed to them.
Making someone's life miserable is not only a waste of one's one lifetime but not helping the next innocent person who is in pre-trial detention for years.
Hi, four-month felony pretrial inmate who is proudly defying recidivism here. I’m the kind of guy who thinks load balancing is a fun topic of discussion — ask anyone who knows me how incredibly unfit for jail I am — and I survived just fine. You seem to have had the shit scared out of you, and I wanted to clarify a few things for you.
You don’t have to be racist to survive county. You simply stick with your race. There’s a distinction. Yes, if shit pops off and you’re not sticking up for your race, you can get called out. But nobody is asking the 70-year-old with a limp to roll heavy with the woods/kinfolk/whatever. There’s more an element here of getting marked as a bitch: prison, and to a lesser extent county, is a game of respect. Run store and someone steals from you? Handle it or it will be repeated, because they notice you don’t stick up for yourself. The smart ones watch. But the woods weren’t eyeing me when I played my daily game of spades with a kinfolk partner (and still friend). It’s not like that in county. Prison, maybe.
DO behavior is intentional. County belongs to them. Prison belongs to the inmates. This was explained to me as “this is their house. Prison is ours.” The person explaining, our head wood, was looking forward to prison. Life is way different in prison, with mutual respect — again, I’m told. Jail sucks on purpose. If it didn’t suck nobody would care that they ended up there. This is the American approach to corrections, that of deterrence; in other places there is more of a focus on rehabilitation, and you’ll find a much different jail experience.
Jail is a lot more fun when you make it abundantly clear to the DOs that you see through their psychopathy. It’s a control mechanism for those who don’t. Once they figure out it doesn’t work on you and you’ll play their game anyway, you can actually develop a decent rapport with DOs. Just never, ever, ever trust them. I grieved one and he used to pull tricks like calling me out right after a race meeting to make it look like I was a snitch (don’t even THINK about snitching, or enjoy PC). They know the game better than you do, and they’re paid to do it.
Those dry runs were actually nice, I found, because it was a nice break outside. My cell was way better than transfer cells, though, and breaking routine sucks. Doing time is all about routine. By 30 days in, I had a schedule. The next 100 flew. Just keep to yourself, improve yourself during the downtime, get on a schedule, and play the respect game carefully and you’ll be fine. I got marked quickly as the computer nerd, but that also meant I could help people out with their legal stuff. Find a purpose and become useful, and stand up for yourself when needed. Lead with your shoulder and pivot, if it comes to that — I’ve fought more outside than in, though, and most of the violence I experienced was from DOs (tased once because I couldn’t hear orders in the shower, pepper sprayed twice). Help the right people and you’ll have the right friends, which is a big part of survival.
Some parts of your comment confused me, so maybe you can clarify. Murder trial inmates are almost always confined in maximum. Medium is a larger cross section of crimes and classification, and most places call medium “gladiator school” or “gladiator academy” because there’s a lot more freedom than maximum and still some hard hitters. Minimum is like summer camp that you can’t leave, with everybody sitting for DUI or check fraud. Transfer cells mix this classification up, which is probably where you landed with the heavy hitters in that 11 hour room (that sounds like transfer), but a misdemeanor rap almost guarantees you were in minimum. Am I right? Or did you get classified as a hitter and thrown in school?
You're supposed to be safe in jail. Just in case that had not sunk in yet because of your experience but whoever runs that jail should be in jail themselves.
That’s the thing, though: you truly cannot rely on that, even more so than the outside world. Once you get there, you realize how much “supposed to be” is just words. You’re supposed to be safe at a country music festival or a church, too. But occasionally, you’re not safe in those situations and it’s through absolutely no fault of your own.
So, you have to protect yourself. In jail, this means fighting when needed. In other situations, it’s just being aware and ready to protect yourself.
DOs certainly respond if a fight takes place (it’s a chance to put some fools in the hole), but it’s the same concept as police response time. If you adopt that otherwise-correct attitude and treat it as more than just words, you won’t be ready for the inevitable. If you take care of things, you will be left alone; there’s some truth in that Hollywood trope about jail. The only person you can rely upon in jail is yourself, and that’s actually a lesson I’m glad I experienced, because it gave me different perspective on day to day life.
Is this right? Not saying it is. I do know I’d much rather be in jail here than, say, Thailand or Peru. Every time they hit a Peruvian jail they confiscate five or six guns.
Funny you say that, by the way, because Joe Arpaio ran my jail. :)
They excel at their non stated purpose: keeping many people employed, making fortunes for some (e.g. prison work), launching political careers for being "tough of crime", keeping blacks down, and satiating society's puritanical need for revenge and Old Testament style punishment.
The US isn't known for an excellent prison system, but it is known for having a pretty good way for citizens to sue the government if they are mistreated.
I was abused in prison I'd expect to be able to sue the state for damages. Is there a general exception to the expectation of security for prisoners that means they can't expect the state to protect their well being in there?
>but it is known for having a pretty good way for citizens to sue the government if they are mistreated.
LOL. There are people proven innocent that get out of jail after 30+ years, with evidence hidden by prosecutors and their trial and other such shady stuff, and they get zilch.
(I don't know anything, and I'm not claiming anything about the GP's allegation or their truthfulness. Just wanted to save others the time of making the same Google searches.)
There are many cases of defendants' right to a speedy trial being trampled. I'm not completely convinced this is a particularly great example of that.
He was arrested while on parole, which is why he didn't get out on bail. Many of the delays came from his side. If it had gone to trial, the prosecution would have only had to prove he was guilty by a preponderance of the evidence. So the long time in detention could have just been a strategy.
> Many of the delays came from his side. If it had gone to trial, the prosecution would have only had to prove he was guilty by a preponderance of the evidence
No, that would be true if it was just revoking parole on the prior charge (it's kind of odd that that didn't happen, but it's possible that the original sentence ended to soon after the arrest to bother), but this was a new criminal charge which would have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
It seems pretty unfair to reset the time limit when they dropped the original charges and recharged him the next day (the article is unclear on what the charges were, and how they differed if they differed at all)
Same for giving a whole new two years after Hurricane Issac.
At some point, particularly for non-violent charges, surely they should have to at least release him until the trial.
While I agree it's unconstitutional to park someone in jail for eight years without bail or a trial, this particular guy is probably ecstatic at how it all worked out:
>As a parolee with a previous drug charge to his name, Smith was looking at a sentence of 20 years to life if convicted as a habitual offender, according to one of his lawyers.
Previous drug charge? Does that mean that he wasn't convicted the first time, either? The only thing "habitual" there, then, would be the police's desire to arrest him.
it's pretty standard in the US for the district attourney to offer a plea bargian of parole in exchange for pleading guilty. This results in high win rate for the attourney and they look at it as most of these parolees end up making a mistake during parole and going in for longer sentances.
Unless some jurisdiction uses “parole” to include what “probation” usually means, that's incorrect, and even if that's true in some jurisdiction it's not in Louisiana, where (as is generally the case) you can be sentenced to probation, or released from a prison sentence on parole.
So, as a parolee, he had previously been sentenced to prison and released under supervision.
Yeah an actual trial with a jury is expensive. The DA wants to avoid that hassle.
Look most people in the US can scrape together 50k for bail and a decent lawyer who tells them exactly how to handle the prosecution. The people who can't are SoL. The burden of poverty.
From the article, he potentially had a plea deal to get out in 2015, but turned it down.
>
“He could have come home as early as January of 2015,” said defense attorney Martin Regan, whose firm handled the case from the start. “There’s a man who just steadfastly said, 'I don’t care, you can keep me. I’m not guilty, I want a trial.' ”
I am thinking it was strategy to wait it out, perhaps not initially.
Or thinking about how he's gonna become a millionaire after suing because of the delays/ loss of right to speedy trial
Uhhh what ever happened to Innocent until proven guilty? The case never went to trial so he was never even proved as guilty - for all you know he could be completely innocent regardless of his past convictions.
That's all true. I'm playing the odds here - it's likely he was guilty, and even if he was innocent it's always possible he would have been found guilty anyway. Especially on a drug charge.
The article doesn't provide a lot of information about why he was charged, just
Smith’s saga behind bars began on Feb. 11, 2010, when State Police and federal drug agents said they discovered baggies of crack cocaine inside a safe in his Carrollton residence.
To me that sounds like he was at the customer end of the distribution, dealing on the street. A potential life sentence for that is bonkers.
I would hope that these days no rational individual could support jail time for any non-violent drug crime, with the possible exception of cross-border smuggling, which treads on some different areas of the law.
Hmm, I’m not so sure we should allow people to sell fentanyl pops or cocaine to kids without going to prison. Not arguing against your point broadly, but that’s exactly the type of response that would sink an effort to remove imprisonment for non violent drug crimes.
As I see it, we need both a propaganda campaign pointing out how nuts the drug laws are in addition to some recognizable way of incrementally easing the laws and adjusting to it. That’s the rational thing an individual would do anyway; i am more aware than ever you need to parcel these things into 2 year steps for american power transfers between parties.
To the person who downvoted me, this is distinctly less useful than contributing the conversation in a meaningul manner.
One of the big problems in America is simply not effectively treating drug use and addiction. Putting people in jail doesn't stop drug use.
You're talking about big distributors, not individual users. Portugal has probably had the best response to drug use, evaluation each case individually and helping people quit drugs when it interferes with their lives.
Well, I thought we were discussing “any non-violent drug crime”. Obviously i’m for rehabilitaion for users; what would the downside be? Could you educate me?
> Even the most invasive surveillance system is more humane that the US prison system.
They don't have the easy access to guns that we don't want to get rid of in the US. I've asked a few people this question: "If it could be so that you were allowed to kill anyone, anywhere. Nobody will stop you. You will face no legal consequences. You just have to produce a list of no fewer than five people you would definitely kill. Can you do that in the five minutes starting now?" You'd be amazed by how many answers I have gotten in the affirmative.
I want to believe that most people don't commit violent crimes because doing so is against their moral fabric. That is not true in the world (or at least the country) we live in.
There are a few criminals who are completely out of reach.
Whether that's physiatric lock up or prison depends I guess.
But most criminals, even most murders aren't out of reach.
Note: I'm not proposing that there need not be control initially. Merely that we need to be better at giving up control over time. And yes, you'll find exceptions.
I mostly agree with you. However, there is no incentive for justice reform. No politician has won any accolades for making prisons safer much less for reintroducing ex-convicts back into the mainstream society. However, if someone ran on that and (inevitably) when someone from a program like that goes off the rails then the politician risks their career. I'm not saying that makes it OK. I am just trying to analyze what the problem is...
I think the main problem is 1. most people just don't care about anything other than themselves and 2. they don't see of themselves in the same shoes as convicts
Well acknowledging that half the US population are irrational is a pretty good first step. You probably wouldn't want to rub it in their faces if you were campaigning for reform like this, but why would you assume they would?
I guess the second step is acknowledging that the other half are also irrational? And anyone campaigning for reform is also clearly irrational... It reminds me of the quote at the end of WarGames: "The only winning move is not to play."
Crime of consumption or mere possession, I fully agree. Even distribution of something like pot, sure. But at the same time, I'm not sure that a rational individual has to agree with the proposition that somebody who's peddling fentanyl should not be put in jail.
(I don't think, from what I know, that distribution of crack would be in that latter group.)
Legalize heroin and then nobody will peddle fentanyl. Crises solved, see Portugal for an example in the real world. Making drugs illegal only really benefits drug dealers by putting the competition in jail and raising prices. Education and laws seem to fare so much better. See alcohol now and compare that to prohibition days rife with organized crime. It's political suicide to legalize street drugs in most countries - so it's a hard sell, but it's the option that makes the most sense.
Legalizing drugs without more thought may actually make the problem worse. If drugs were 100% fully legal no restrictions why wouldn't corporations start advertising and pushing them as much as they do alcohol today?
I'm actually for legalizing drugs but heard these arguments on an Intelligence Squared debate.
BTW: Heroin isn't legal in Portugal, it's just decriminalized. You can still go to prison for selling heroin in Portugal and using, while not a criminal offense will still get you sent in to the authorities for "dissuasion"
I don't think anyone is arguing for no restrictions on schedule one drugs. Just clearly criminalizing possession/use is not working and it's time to try a new strategy. Distribution/selling should still be illegal and controlled by the government. I'd like to see a system where heroin addicts can get a prescription/license that allows them to purchase directly in a supervised injection center. I'd also like there to be plenty of resources and information available from the same place for those looking to leave that life behind.
But I'm not an expert, and probably the people who are could come up with a better solution.
You can ban advertising of alcohol (since 1975) and tobacco (and tobacco replacements) as well as drugs. Where I live (Norway) you can't advertise any of those things and it seems that most people are quite happy with that.
That's because in Europe it is very difficult to disappear under the radar. Most people show up on trial, the ones that don't are nabbed pretty quickly.
The only people who have to await trial in jail are the ones that are considered dangerous or a real flight risk. There's no way a low level drug dealer would escape abroad.
It makes sense as a deposit to make sure you show up to trial. But in practice, with bail bonds, it’s a fee. The financial amounts are rarely in line with what it would take to get someone to show up trial.
I live in New Orleans. The judge, Flemings-Davillier, is well known as a tool of the district attorney, Canizzaro, who employs dirty tactics like fake subpoenas.
For more on Orleans Parish justice, google "Give me a lawyer dog"
Hey it works for Singapore, Indonesia, and probably the Philippines.
I think people are easier to control, but less productive when they have drugs. So it's really a question of what your nation is optimizing for at the time.
Of course having a sub-class of previously convicted minor offenders, who as a result struggle with work/life, can also be fairly effective. It's not exactly slavery - that was mostly their ancestors.
"""I think people are easier to control, but less productive when they have drugs. So it's really a question of what your nation is optimizing for at the time."""
This is an opinion.
My opinion about your opinion is that your opinion is completely dumb and completely unfounded.
Michael Phelps smokes marijuana...along with countless other extremely high performers, doctor's, lawyers, politicians,movie stars, scientists Nobel prize winners, etc.
As for saying that executing drug offenders 'works'....I can't think of anything I've ever heard that's dumber in my life.
Especially when you could just execute ANYONE for breaking a law and keep the jails completely empty!
People in the US have a lot of drugs and are also very productive. Your assertion makes no sense. I don't know much about Indonesia, but Singapore is an authoritarian state, and Duerte is trying to turn the Phillipines into a dictatorship. Tyrants like drug laws, and especially death penalty for drugs because it gives them an easy way to keep their thugs in practice, remind the populace that they are ready to kill, and gives them an easy way to assassinate troublemakers.
There is a middle ground here, folks. Legalize some less-addictive and -harmful drugs like marijuana. Legalize possession of small quantities of others. Get rid of three strikes laws.
It's not easy, but we can work toward a compromise that recognizes both that drug use can cause harm to society, and that it often does not. We can punish people who push opioids, while leaving harmless users alone.
No matter which way you look at it, drug policy enforcement causes more harm and costs more dollars than the problem it purports to alleviate. Take a look at Portugal where all drug possession was decriminalized and drug-related crime went down.
This is not a complicated problem, the solution is clear and well documented. The only obstacle is multi billion dollar sector that exists only because of the prohibitive drug policy. That sector won't just dissolve without putting up a fight.
It's pretty obvious what happened here. Everyone involved basically assumed he was or would be found guilty and didn't see an issue with him sitting in a cell for "just a few more months"
The government should pay back-salary to anyone with a case dismissed in this manner. This would cause queue back-pressure that would focus the system on high-value targets at the front of the queue.
> The government should pay back-salary to anyone with a case dismissed in this manner.
The "government" is the taxpayers, basically. I'd rather have all folks involved in ruining that man's life being sued like they should, and having to repay him for the opportunity loss. Taxpayers represent an infinite pocket to steal from, but private citizens don't have as much resources and should be held responsible for their decisions.
I think so, but the Supreme Court didn't in 1976. Frankly, I think there should be a lot more personal liability around careless work when it impacts the health & safety of others.
For example, I think police misconduct damages should be paid of out of the police pension funds.
If you have so many people in jail awaiting trial that judges have multi-year backlogs to try cases, that says a lot about the justice system... but more importantly, what does it say about the laws themselves?
I think we have to be careful given the article only looks at one side. While in this case it took an absurd turn and is a clear case of "lock this dude behind bars: we don't like him", it is not always that simple.
I would give as an example the patent trolls. They abuse of the court and fill motions after motions (or dismiss early) for the sole purpose of making their case expansive to defend against. A knowledgeable inmate or greedy public defendant could use the same tactics and delay the case only for the deadline to pass. If it can turn a life sentence into a 24 months one, then procrastination and delays are the quickest way out of jail.
That being said, for recurrent inmates, the failure of the system is definitely in the rehab process. In some US states, it seems like the legal system exists only to sustain itself, its elected officials and the industries (lawyers, penitentiary, investigators, forensic) that runs it. This case is apparently a blatant example of bureaucracy indifference. If the fact were shown in their face, they would blame the weather or the defendant own motions to have his rights taken into account. I am not a socialist, far from it. However when it comes to absurdities such as this, it is a clear sign that a proper social net is necessary to avoid a slippery slopes where the incarcerated population will grow and grow and grow. So do the expanses associated with it. Better solve the problem instead of the consequences.
Cops can arrest you for any reason, and if you can't make bail, then they place you in jails with convicted violent felons, some on murder trials.
In LA jails, you have to be racist. Depending on your pod and program, you have special requirements.
You often have to fight, especially if you are black or Hispanic. If there's a brawl inside the pod, you have to fight other races or you will be beaten by your own.
I sat in a tiny room for 11 hours with 50 inmates, half of which had face tattoos and were gang members. A room where inmates had been beaten to death and the others just cover up the cameras.
Multiple times I wasn't called to court, they were "dry runs". Mental torture and real risk required just for due process.
These types of systems only create more criminals.
The deputies act like psychopaths, taunting and roughing up inmates. But not as bad since now the FBI has cameras watching them.
The person who interceded in my misdemeanor case and put me in jail was the former head of California Homeland Security.
His lawyer, also a former federal prosecutor, was in every court appearance lobbying the prosecutor. He also represented the Chief of Police, the City Council and the Sheriff.
Their boss is a secretive billionaire whose former lawyer became the new Supreme Court Justice this year after he lobbied He is a very powerful person who hires former federal officials as political mercenaries.
This all happened because they wanted to protect a wealthy sex predator. In 2-weeks, the Homeland official is actually testifying for the sex predator for his civil trial. He is presumably testifying against my credibility.