Start Date: December 27, 2021
While visiting a local police station I discussed challenges facing my community. A very patient and kind officer stated, “We want to help but everything is legal?”
More recently I was speaking with a very cheerful young sergeant. In the course of conversation she questioned why anyone would live in her home state of California given the “COMPLETE LAWLESSNESS. NO BAIL, NO JAIL.” It was so sad to see a young woman, committed to serve, experiencing such a justified sense of futility. Moreover the present understanding of the term “No Bail” is a revelation of how far we have abandoned the basic premise of law enforcement.
In 1990 network TV introduced a series known as “Law and Order.” It lasted for 20 seasons with multiple cast changes, and generated several spinoffs. The framework of each episode was to present two elements of the criminal justice system. The first half hour was dedicated to the discovery of the crime followed by law enforcement’s efforts to find clues, interrogate suspects, collect evidence, and then arrest the accused. The second half hour involved the trial, displaying the district attorney’s efforts to prosecute the case.
The transition point was when the suspect was brought for an initial appearance in court to determine the assignment of bail. On many occasions the judge was persuaded that the defendant would have “No Bail”. For those living in 21st century CA, NY, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, etc. it must be explained that this did not mean that the accused would walk out free. It meant that they were remanded for trial, i.e. the crime was so heinous, the threat to society so grave, the likelihood of fleeing so great, that NO AMOUNT OF MONEY was considered sufficient to secure the prisoner. Thus they were left in prison. Needless to say this works better when the 6th Amendment right to a speedy public trial is upheld.
However the modern George Soros’ funded DA notion of “No Bail” has been turned on its head. It now means that your arrest was simply an exercise in form. No need for you to be concerned. You will be back out in society, such as it is, reoffending before law enforcement fills out the paperwork. The CA Supreme court ruled that the ability of the defendant to pay bail is a relevant factor when assigning its value. The rationale is that we are somehow evening the score between the rich and the poor. This seems to ignore that fact that the victims of poor criminals are often also poor, perhaps more so after the crime. But I wonder if there is something else at work.
CA IS ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. If you are poor and get arrested and cannot pay bail the state will find itself having to pay for your shelter, food, protection, health care, and wardrobe while incarcerated. That is a non-negligible amount of money our politicians would prefer to direct to the developers and public employee unions who provide them with campaign donations and voters. Why waste it on criminals? Who cares about their victims who are primarily poor and powerless.
In 2020, in response to calls to defund the police, the Pasadena PD disbanded its gang unit. If you find yourself wondering, “Did the gangs similarly disband?” No they did not. Within weeks a young child was shot playing in his front yard on a Sunday afternoon [1]. In 2021 a 13 year old honor student in Pasadena was killed by a bullet that struck him in his bedroom while he was playing video games [2]. Neither child was a target. Unlike the Italian mafia, who never seemed to miss their man, or hit the baby on the front porch, modern gangs seem to truly be “the gang that can’t shoot straight.” So the “cost” of crime has been transferred from expenditures on law enforcement, prosecution, and incarceration, to the shoulders of those who are victims of crime.
This wayward path seems to have begun in the early 2010’s. First there was a court ruling under Jerry Brown’s 2nd pass as governor. The essence was that the prisons were overcrowded to the point of inhumane conditions. Most of us would agree that we are better than that. But it is worth noting that CA is the tax capital of the country. OK, maybe we share the gold medal with NY. Our tax revenues are enormous. In the year of 2021, the state took in over $30 billion in surplus, i.e. over taxation beyond it’s needs. Surely there was enough to build new prisons, develop mandated drug rehabilitation facilities for imprisoned addicts, and do a meaningful assessment of who can and cannot be redeemed.
But instead the “solution” was to simply dictate a grand scale “get out of jail free” process. Even the Washington Post, in 2016, reported on this novel, lazy, approach as “An Unprecedented Experiment in Mass Forgiveness” [3]. Really? Depending on your belief system there are ways to achieve spiritual absolution, but the primary responsibility of the state is to provide for the security of its citizens.
Anyone who has lived through this era has seen the deterioration of their communities, the bodies, tents, drugs, stabbings, arson, armed robberies, shootings. If you listen to the DAs they will tell you that everything is fine. OK there may be an increase in violent crime. It is pretty hard to hide dead bodies. But they will insist that “crime” is down. No. The daily videos of violent robberies are not your imagination. What is down are arrests and reported crimes. Suppose you are a victim and you choose to compound your losses by taking time from your job or business to report the crime, given that you can find someone to take the report, or make your way through a city website. At best the criminal is arrested and sent back to the streets in hours, at worst not arrested at all because your city won’t allow police officers to interfere with criminals for fear of an incident. You have wasted time, lost money, and may get the message from the criminal element that there will be consequences for your efforts. So, on paper, it all goes away.
Having had so much success with eliminating bail, and minimizing arrests, the goal for some is to close the prisons and end policing. Apparently no prisoners and no arrests equals no crime. I guess it is the new math, but I don’t think it will end well.
REFERENCES
[1] KCAL News, ”10-Year-Old Pasadena Boy Shot, Critically Wounded While Playing In Yard”, CBSLA, February 15, 2021, https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/pasadena-boy-10-shot-critically-wounded-while-playing-in-yard/
[2] Licas, Eric, “13-year-old boy killed by stray bullet into his bedroom in Pasadena”, Pasadena Star-News, November 21, 2021, https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2021/11/20/13-year-old-killed-by-stray-bullet-in-pasadena/
[3] “An unprecedented experiment in mass forgiveness”, Washington Post, February 8, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/an-unprecedented-experiment-in-mass-forgiveness/2016/02/08/45899f9c-a059-11e5-a3c5-c77f2cc5a43c_story.html