Jail Shouldn’t Be The Holy Grail for Law Enforcement in San Diego
What if throwing people in jail isn’t necessarily a good idea?
County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer thinks the practice of reducing incarceration in County jails during the past two years presents an opportunity to study that question.
The average daily population of the county’s seven jails fell by a third following pandemic-tied decisions to scale back jail bookings and the release of hundreds of inmates.
Next week the Supervisors will be asked to sign off on hiring an expert to assess the public safety and fiscal impacts of those changes. This is an important step.
From Voice of San Diego:
“Now that we did make that change, what can we learn from it to improve public safety for our community, to improve treatment and opportunities and the trajectories of people who are being caught in our criminal justice system, and most important, to address some of these root causes around some of these social ills?” Lawson-Remer said.
Lawson-Remer is asking for a preliminary analysis and recommendations by March for consideration in next year’s county budget. A final report in February 2023 could form the basis for a five-year plan.
Requests for studies and analysis on issues by County Supervisors have been the prelude for discussions about substantive changes in policies. Given the poor record of the Sheriff's Department at simply keeping inmates alive, it’s high time for some substantive changes, including a rethinking of who gets incarented and why.
Criminal justice reform, alternatives to incarceration and solutions that prioritize investments to better address behavioral health challenges and poverty are things that need to be on the table, and the real power vested in the Supervisors is control of the budget.
Simply directing the County Sheriff to implement policies isn’t really an option; the California constitution says they are to be elected officials with executive powers. Some counties have limited the scope of their Sheriff Departments responsibilities, but it’s rare and difficult for changing the course once it is set.
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Putting bad actors behind bars has been at the root of what the public expects from its paid protectors in our culture. “Everybody knows” that property crimes and acts of violence require incarceration. During the late Twentieth Century this process increased as if it was on steroids.
The cycle of increased incarceration eased over the past decade as legal efforts stemming from overcrowded jails and some increased consciousness about the racism inherent in a criminal justice system whose past includes acting as enforcers for slaveholders.
Now, thanks to a meta-study of 116 examinations on the impacts of incarceration across time, geographies, and methodologies.by the University of Chicago, it’s time to rethink the “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” mentality.
Here’s the bottom line: prison does not make us safer. Indeed it makes society less safe.
https://twitter.com/ScottHech/status/1447600997040201737?s=20
Hechinger’s analysis of recent claims about media coverage of a purported “spike in crimes” at the Nation provides examples of how enablers of the prison-industrial complex (law enforcement + the companies selling them goods and services) use out of context data to justify their existence.
On September 27, 2021, the FBI released much-anticipated crime data on that most unusual year 2020. The statistics revealed a continued steady decline in major crimes overall—apart from one unfortunate outlier: homicides. Despite homicides being at historic lows, especially when compared to the 1980s and 1990s, the murder rate last year rose by 30 percent compared to the previous year. This rise has left journalists and analysts seeking explanations. Yet the notoriously volatile nature of short-term crime data renders such efforts futile. Ascribing a short-term fluctuation to any particular cause—even a global pandemic—is impossible.
While police and allies have attempted to use the data to tie “bail reform” and racial justice protests to this past year’s rise in murders, those claims are contradicted by the geography of the rise in homicides, which occurred across the country: in red and blue states, in jurisdictions that have seen some measured wins for criminal and civil justice and those that haven’t, in jurisdictions that saw protests against police violence, and those that haven’t—and all despite massive police budgets.
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I’m not advocating for the elimination of incarceration; I’m saying the way we approach it isn’t working if the goal is to make our society safer.
Here’s one example of thinking outside the box from a recent article in the New York Times suggesting that greening and cleaning in locales with high levels of gun violence works as a deterrent:
My colleagues Charles Branas and John MacDonald and I have now conducted two large-scale studies where, instead of randomizing people to receive an intervention — as is typical in science — we randomly chose places to receive an intervention. Randomized controlled trials produce the highest level of unbiased results in research: Large, well-constructed R.C.T.s allow us to confidently say that intervention X causes outcome Y.
In partnership with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, our team transformed run-down vacant parcels of land by planting new grass and trees, installing low wooden post-and-rail fences around the perimeter and performing regular maintenance. We randomly selected hundreds of lots across Philadelphia to receive either this clean and green intervention, trash cleanup only or no intervention at all.
We found that after both the greening and trash cleanup interventions, gun violence went down significantly. The steepest drop in crime, up to 29 percent, was in the several blocks surrounding vacant lots in neighborhoods whose residents live below the poverty line. This signaled that communities with the highest need may benefit the most from place-based investment. Over 18 months, we analyzed for and did not find any evidence of crime simply being pushed to other parts of the city.
The thinking becomes the plan. There has been much discussion about the possibilities of approaching justice from a restorative perspective. Acceptance of this methodology has been limited by fears about endangering communities. I’d be willing to bet that a portion of those fears are driven by law enforcement looking to preserve the status quo.
We need to understand that our justice system is based on using violence or the threat of violence for its power. Changing that reality --which took generations to evolve-- is going to be a multi-step process.
Looking outside Western European conventions --as the founders of this country did when writing the constitution-- at the best practices of historic Native American institutions is a great place to start.
Actions like those proposed by Supervisor Lawson-Remer are an important first step. Increased civilian oversight (with actual powers) of policing is another. And unraveling the intricate symbiosis between enforcers and prosecutors is yet another challenge.
The biggest obstacle moving forward is the fear-based propaganda emanating from those who favor a more authoritarian approach toward society. While the politicians in this realm use government intervention in social and economic issues as a bludgeon to drive fear-based responses in the electorate, in practice they take the opposite approach.
I’ll use one word to make my case for this being the truth: Texas.
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Lead image via County News Center