Jail, Jail, Jail, Jail, Jail

(c) by Mark Dempsey

The County is sponsoring "listening" sessions about the County Jail. Of course no alternatives to jailing are offered, further validating Boss Tweed's political wisdom: "I don't care who people vote for as long as I can pick the candidates. Here's my email to the "listeners" and supervisors:

Dear "Listeners," Supervisors, and others,

The announced South Sacramento "Listening Session[s]" about jail planning are too far away, and too late at night for me to attend, so I'm writing this email to tell you what I would say if I were present:

First: People are easily influenced, and Hollywood tells us that detectives always nab the bad guys and that Perry Mason gets the ones the cops miss. In real life, though, the police and courts solve far fewer crimes--13% in California in 2022 (says Governing.com ). Cops, courts & cages don't get an A-plus; they get an F-minus. They are a terrible way to handle crime!

Nevertheless, since the '80s, spending on policing and prisons has increased more than four times faster than population growth. The influence of these fictions also appears in incarceration rates. With five percent of the world’s population, the US has 25% of its prisoners, five times the world’s per-capita average incarceration rate, seven times Canada’s or France’s rates, per-capita. Is Canadian or French crime worse than US crime? No, it's not as bad.

What's different in Canadian and French societies that lets them incarcerate at one-seventh the US rate and still have lower crime rates? For one thing, the US has more than half a million medical bankruptcies annually. Canada and France don't have those.

Could treating people better influence crime rates? Never mind Canada and France, multiple studies (here [pdf], and here, among others) conclude that treating poor people better lowers crime rates, and is cheaper than cops, courts, and cages.

Yet the US--and certainly Sacramento County--continues to believe that increasing people's desperation, not treating them well, is the way to solve the crime problem. True, the County has programs to lessen recidivism, but even the ineffective ones continue receive funding.

The vengeful impulse for punitive penalties has some local support, but Hollywood’s fiction and the media’s scary headlines keep the public anxious. Rather than house the homeless, open local free clinics, or experiment with basic job or income guarantees for the poor, the Board of Supervisors has actually considered enlarging the County jail more than once. spending millions that could conceivably fund more effective, less costly, and cruel alternatives.

Supervisor Rodriguez's newsletter even celebrated a court ruling that lets the County "sweep" (i.e., remove) homeless people camped on public land, whether there's alternative housing or not. Ms. Rodriguez apparently is in the running for the “Cruella D’Evil” award previously won by her predecessor, Sue Frost.

Meanwhile, the County's jail is full and has even lost a lawsuit about how its conditions mistreat prisoners. But 60 - 80% of its prisoners are convicted of nothing more than an inability to afford bail. They're doubly poor, too, because they'll likely lose whatever job they might have had if they await trial in jail, never mind the damage keeping them incarcerated does to their families and community.

Nevertheless, Sacramento County continues to send the message that you're not innocent until proven guilty, you're guilty until proven wealthy. Incarceration without trial also pressures innocent people to plead guilty just to get out of confinement sooner. That's not justice, it's an extortion racket.

As far as I know, the County has not considered supervised release or no-cash bail. In fact, the US and the Philippines are the only countries worldwide that require cash bail. That policy is a recipe for an expanding punishment bureaucracy, not a solution for crime. Incidentally, you'll seldom hear it from the Supervisors, but crime has been declining for decades now.



Opponents of a kinder approach to people accused might cite Yolo County's unfavorable experience--more crimes and more recidivism--when they released inmates early during COVID times. Yet Washington, D.C., and the state of Illinois have adopted no-cash bail for select offenses, and reporting from Illinois suggests there are ways to successfully do this. The headline: Nearly 8 months into Illinois' new era without cash bail, experts say recidivism and jail populations are trending lower.”

There are certainly ways to sabotage the kinder alternatives to incarceration. Oregon attempted to decriminalize drugs, then repealed that legislation as a failure. In Oregon, police were tasked to offer the alternative to drugs–rehab–with tickets. The drug users were not impressed, to say the least, and the police didn’t handle their defiance well. Why it almost looks like the police are tasked to implement such solutions to sabotage them!

Meanwhile, incarceration is seven times more expensive than medical addiction treatment and has a lower success rate. One study says: “If 40 percent of offenders receive rehab vs. incarceration, it saves the system $13 billion. Choosing drug treatment leads to fewer crimes, lower addiction rates, and saves society money.” Other countries--Portugal and Switzerland, among them--have successfully decriminalized drugs.

For those interested in more information, I'd recommend Alec Karakatsanis' Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System, and Copaganda: How the Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, which describe how pervasive the problems described here are. Getting this information would require reading as well as listening, but the Supervisors have surely mastered that skill. If they like, I'll send them copies, just let me know who wants one.

I've sent this information to the Supervisors repeatedly, so you'll pardon my skepticism about their ability to "Listen." I even sat on a County commission (a Community Planning Advisory Council) and can testify from my experience that County officials are at least hearing impaired when it comes to public input.

Grinding any opposition to pre-determined outcomes to dust with endless hearings (always halted once the opposition gets too close to success) and "listening" appears to be the County's preferred approach to public input. The County would rather continue its bankrupt strategy to ensure citizen safety than actually do something--competently, without sabotage--that's kinder, cheaper, and more effective.