Jail Talk

(c) by Mark Dempsey

A "listening session" for the Sacramento County Jail Master Plan (PSJA@saccounty.gov) just occurred. It sought to shape the jail's future, and a presentation, eventually, to the County's Supervisors. The county is motivated to change because it lost the Mays Decision, a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of mistreated prisoners.

The Mays Decision itself doesn't request bigger facilities; jail personnel are the problem. Public comments said this remains unchanged, and jailers remain abusive, even denying inmates their medication.

In fairness to the County, the jail is full. However, the County did not mention that 60%-80% of the prisoners are not convicted of anything except being too poor to afford bail. The US and the Philippines are the only two countries that require cash bail. Illinois and Washington, D.C., have abandoned it for selected crimes without bad consequences. The public, not the County, brought up eliminating cash bail.

The US incarcerates at five times the world's per-capita average, seven times more than Canada, and Canadian crime rates are lower. Prisons do not prevent crime.

The only prisoners described in the County's presentation were mentally ill or addicted. There was no mention of anything to address the poverty that prevents prisoners from posting bail. That's despite the largest homeless population since the Great Depression--driven primarily by poverty, not mental illness; in a country where 40% of the population can't afford a $400 emergency, and 60% of workers live check to check.

Santa Clara County has Destination: Home, which supplies emergency funds to those on the verge of homelessness. It took the public, not the County, to bring this up.

Will the "listening" produce any change in the County's willful ignorance about poverty driving people to desperate behavior like crime? Let's just say I'm not holding my breath.

The above is my writing. To add to that, here is from William Murphy:

The United States does not have a 'crime problem' in the way it’s usually framed. It has a social organization problem—a system that reliably generates the conditions under which crime becomes rational, predictable, and, in many cases, unavoidable. ....

When large sections of a population face economic precarity, unstable housing, inadequate healthcare, and underfunded education, those conditions shape behavior. Not in a simplistic, deterministic way—but in a probabilistic one. The more pressure you apply to a system, the more predictable its outcomes become.

In the U.S., those pressures are intense:

• Wages that lag far behind cost of living
• Housing markets that function as speculative assets rather than human necessities
• Healthcare tied to employment or priced out of reach
• Education systems stratified by zip code
• A labor market that oscillates between exploitation and exclusion

Under those conditions, 'crime' is not an anomaly. It is one of several adaptation strategies.

The key point: these outcomes are not bugs in the system. They are features.....

And it leads to a fundamental contradiction: the same system that produces the conditions for crime also deploys force to contain its consequences. ...

Under [our current system], certain social conditions are not just tolerated—they are functional:

• Cheap labor requires economic vulnerability
• High rents require housing scarcity
• Private healthcare profits require limited access
• Consumer markets thrive on debt and instability

These dynamics generate inequality. And inequality, in turn, generates crime.

At the same time, entire industries profit from the management of crime:

• Private prisons
• Surveillance technologies
• Security services
• Insurance markets

This creates a feedback loop where the system has no structural incentive to eliminate the root causes of crime. It only has incentives to manage and monetize its effects.

If the problem is structural, then the solution has to be structural. Not cosmetic reforms, not rhetorical shifts—material changes.

Here’s what the evidence shows works:

1. Economic Stability - Cash transfers, wage increases, and employment programs consistently reduce property crime and, in some cases, violence.

2. Housing as a Right - [Also] Lowers overall system costs

3. Universal Healthcare Mental health issues and substance use are deeply intertwined with crime, particularly at the street level.Treating these as criminal issues rather than health issues produces predictable results: cycling people through jails without addressing the underlying causes.

4. Education and Youth Investment - These are not quick fixes. They are long-term investments.

5. Community-Based Violence Reduction - ...don’t rely on coercion. They rely on legitimacy.

6. Justice System Reform The current system often exacerbates the very problems it claims to solve.

• Ending cash bail for low-level offenses
• Reducing excessive sentences
• Expanding parole and reentry support
• Using restorative justice where appropriate

     The goal is not to eliminate accountability—but to make it constructive rather than purely punitive.

7. Redefining the Role of Police - Not every social problem requires an armed response.
At the same time, accountability for use of force must be real, not symbolic.

The Real Question ...The deeper question is this: What kind of society are we trying to build? One that manages inequality through force? Or one that reduces inequality so that force becomes less necessary?

.... Crime is not an isolated pathology. It is a system output.