equality in the eyes of the law (or: Pig Shenanigans)

[likeawoman]

For $82 a Day, Booking a Cell in a 5-Star Jail

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Published: April 29, 2007

SANTA ANA, Calif., April 25 — Anyone convicted of a crime knows a debt to society often must be paid in jail. But a slice of Californians willing to supplement that debt with cash (no personal checks, please) are finding that the time can be almost bearable.

For offenders whose crimes are usually relatively minor (carjackers should not bother) and whose bank accounts remain lofty, a dozen or so city jails across the state offer pay-to-stay upgrades. Theirs are a clean, quiet, if not exactly recherché alternative to the standard county jails, where the walls are bars, the fellow inmates are hardened and privileges are few.

Many of the self-pay jails operate like the secret velvet-roped nightclubs of the corrections world. You have to be in the know to even apply for entry, and even if the court approves your sentence there, jail administrators can operate like bouncers, rejecting anyone they wish.
...

For roughly $75 to $127 a day, these convicts — who are known in the self-pay parlance as “clients” — get a small cell behind a regular door, distance of some amplitude from violent offenders and, in some cases, the right to bring an iPod or computer on which to compose a novel, or perhaps a song
...

While jails in other states may offer pay-to-stay programs, numerous jail experts said they did not know of any.

“I have never run into this,” said Ken Kerle, managing editor of the publication American Jail Association and author of two books on jails. “But the rest of the country doesn’t have Hollywood either. Most of the people who go to jail are economically disadvantaged, often mentally ill, with alcohol and drug problems and are functionally illiterate. They don’t have $80 a day for jail.”
...

“The benefits are that you are isolated and you don’t have to expose yourself to the traditional county system,” said Christine Parker, a spokeswoman for CSI, a national provider of jails that runs three in Orange County with pay-to-stay programs. “You can avoid gang issues. You are restricted in terms of the number of people you are encountering and they are a similar persuasion such as you.”
...

“It seems to be to be a little unfair,” said Mike Jackson, the training manager of the National Sheriff’s Association. “Two people come in, have the same offense, and the guy who has money gets to pay to stay and the other doesn’t. The system is supposed to be equitable.”

But cities argue that the paying inmates generate cash, often hundreds of thousands of dollars a year — enabling them to better afford their other taxpayer-financed operations — and are generally easy to deal with.
...

“The prisoners who are charged with nonviolent crimes and typically have no record are not in the best position to handle themselves in the general county facility,” Professor Goldman said.
...

emphasis mine throughout. may be available here after Sunday edition comes out.

I'd like to say I can't believe this, but I have no problem believing it, it just makes me sick. I'm sorry, but if jail isn't safe for "good people" who have "bad things happen to" them, maybe we should be focusing on making jail safer and more habitable, not let Whitey McDUI and Possession McFratBoy pay to get the resort version. I mean, really, is there any way to ignore the blatant classist and racist and ableist assumptions that accompany allowing certain criminals to pay for better accommodations, if they have the cash?

it reminds me of some news I heard about Michigan prisons being handed a new standard regarding the temperature of cells after a physically restrained, mentally ill prisoner DIED of hyperthermia and dehydration after 4 days in a 100+ degree cell in the Jackson complex. I wonder if he'd had a little extra cash if they could've worked out some AC for him. maybe if he'd had 80 bucks a day, he could've gotten one of the medical professionals whose job it was to monitor him to consider saving his life, instead of just ignoring his plummeting vital signs and refusal of water and food.

it's bad enough that for people of color, poor people and the mentally ill (and god help you if you're any combination of those) prison is unsafe and unhealthy and often deadly by sheer neglect. now those who have can skip out on those risks altogether.

perhaps, instead of letting certain folks buy out, we should develop a correctional system that is somewhere near humane, somewhere near habitable. maybe we should stop treating these people, often the victims of circumstance and an utter lack of power or influence (and very often non-violent drug offenders who are the victims of outdated, unrealistic, inexcusable drug policy), worse than we do cattle. maybe we should consider that all of this makes a mockery of the Eighth Amendment, a part of the document that is supposed to be at the very core of our legal system.

how can we even begin to point at China, at the Middle East, at North Korea, at the places that Americans accuse of being uncivilized, unjust and barbaric, without considering the egregious mockery that we make of human rights and our own legal system? how is it that Americans can find themselves outraged to the point of supporting a war against a nation based as much as anything on what we see as their lack of freedom while we ourselves ignore how selective our own concept of freedom is.

this country is in dire need of some serious wake up calls

ETA: it's so sad when the Onion is prescient

Comments

[chrisswiss83.livejournal.com]

how can we even begin to point at China, at the Middle East, at North Korea, at the places that Americans accuse of being uncivilized, unjust and barbaric, without considering the egregious mockery that we make of human rights and our own legal system? how is it that Americans can find themselves outraged to the point of supporting a war against a nation based as much as anything on what we see as their lack of freedom while we ourselves ignore how selective our own concept of freedom is.

I was watching a special on National Geographic where Lisa Ling went to North Korea a few nights ago. I kept thinking that it didn't seem as odd as they were presenting it. It didn't seem like it would be that far away in our future.