“Cite and release” considered in Los Angeles
Long long ago, when I was in college and took some sociology courses, I seem to recall learning about the purposes (plural) of incarceration. I’m doing this from memory, but they went something like this: protection (of the public), deterrence (for other would-be criminals who might think twice), punishment (in the moral sense of “you do the crime, you do the time”), and rehabilitation (for example, courses and training available in prison).
Imprisonment never fell equally on all groups. Just to take one obvious example, prisons are mostly filled with men. Is that because men are being discriminated against? No; it’s because crimes are disproportionately committed by men. And youngish men, at that. There are also racial and socioeconomic differences. For that matter, I seem to recall that crimes are disproportionately committed by people who have had head injuries.
Incarceration does not, and never will, be “fair” in the sense that every group is imprisoned in exact proportion to its representation in the general population. But that impossible endpoint seems to be the goal of the left. Another goal is to empty the prisons as much as possible. And what of those goals of imprisonment that I mentioned at the outset: protection, deterrence, punishment, and rehabilitation? I don’t see how they are preserved, although there is lip service paid to the latter through programs that advocate social workers replacing police for many offenders.
Which brings us to this Los Angeles proposal:
Calling overcrowding in Los Angeles County jails a humanitarian crisis, Hilda Solis and Lindsey Horvath, members of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors (BOS), introduced a motion to depopulate the jail system by making permanent the Emergency Bail Schedule—a pandemic-era policy that freed individuals held on bail for both felonies and misdemeanors. Under “cite and release,” police would issue a “ticket” or citation for suspected unlawful conduct but would not bring the suspect to jail for a formal booking. Suspects get released on the condition that they make a signed promise to show up to their court date.
What sorts of offenses would be subject to this policy? Why, nothing so terrible:
The motion also called for citing and releasing individuals with aggregate bail amounts set at $50,000 or below. According to the Los Angeles County Felony Bail Summary, bail for the following offenses fall under that threshold: possession of firearm by a felon, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with a firearm, assault with chemicals, extortion and criminal threats, burglary with explosives, recklessly causing a fire with great bodily injury, and vehicular manslaughter (i.e., driving a vehicle with gross negligence). Common sense would suggest that these offenses warrant a more serious response than a citation…
In L.A. County, an overwhelming number of such crimes would be eligible for cite and release, including domestic violence; child abuse; battery; sexual battery; violation of a protective order; pimping a minor (aged 16 or older); possession of GHB (a so-called date-rape drug) with intent to commit sexual assault; child stealing; contact with a minor to commit sexual offense (with a prior); incest; sodomy (for victims under age 18); oral copulation (for victims under age 18); possession, distribution, or control of child pornography; and elder abuse.
The public outcry was so huge that Solis and Horvath withdrew the motion. But it is emblematic of where the left wants to take the treatment of those accused of crimes and those incarcerated for crimes. Need I also add that the innocent victims of such a policy would have disproportionately consisted of black people?
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
https://notthebee.com/article/pew-study-indicates-leftism-is-literally-a-mental-illness-
Well, yeah… as I was saying…
https://www.floppingaces.net/2023/04/10/we-dont-need-to-ban-guns-we-need-to-ban-progressive-liberals/
Which is more insane, this grotesquely stupid proposal from LA or the idea in SF of granting billions upon billions in “reparations” (in actual fact, already paid in food stamps, welfare, etc, in the amount of perhaps thirty trillion, since LBJ’s “Great Society”) to the city’s black residents? No part of our ailing republic (not even Illinois or NY) is governed in more evil fashion than the No-Longer-Golden-State.
“Suspects get released on the condition that they make a signed promise to show up to their court date.”
How does that proposal differ in any significant way from Brandon’s “catch and release” policy in regard to illegal immigrants? Meanwhile, “A federal judge ruled in favor of the state of Florida on [March 8] and struck down the Biden administration’s use of parole to free illegal migrants in droves that are caught crossing the border. . . . ‘There is nothing inherently inhumane or cruel about detaining aliens pending completion of their immigration proceedings,’ [the judge] added.”
https://nypost.com/2023/03/08/judge-strikes-down-bidens-catch-and-release-border-policy/
“Cite and release” WRT to Inflation.
See, the Democrats let that mean, nasty, dangerous, out-of-control Inflation leave the slammer…actually encouraged Inflation to go berserk…and as a result, Inflation is out to get ALL yer money. Out to mug you. Out to hurt you bad. Real, real bad….
“Peter Schiff: This Banking Crisis Is the Cusp Of A Much Worse Financial Crisis”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/peter-schiff-banking-crisis-cusp-much-worse-financial-crisis
Key grafs:
‘…”If they take the money that they owe you, and they blow it on overpriced mortgage-backed securities, then they can’t pay you back….”
‘…”Well, the US government doesn’t have any money. Where does the US government get the money? From the Fed. The Fed just prints the money. That’s where the FDIC gets the money, which is why everybody is going to lose….”
‘…”The only way the government can make sure your bank doesn’t fail is by destroying the value of the money that you have on deposit. It’s inflation that is going to wipe out the value of everybody’s bank accounts.”…’
(I guess that’s THE super-crisis coming down the pike. Or one of them. Who’ll have time to worry about anything if you lose all your money? Ukraine? Iran? China/Taiwan? The border. Energy? Trump? Stolen elections? Etc.,
Besides, it’s ONE INGENIOUS way to reduce the humungous national deficit…!)
In any event it looks like “Biden” is—most cleverly—transforming “transitory inflation” into “transitory savings”….
But don’t worry…’cuz everything’s sound and under control…
In the past prisons were also known as penitentiaries. For good reason, presumably.
there is no credible research that underlies these policies, might as well be casting spells,
Need I also add that the innocent victims of such a policy would have disproportionately consisted of black people?
I often think that perhaps the quiet part needs to be said very loudly. These “cite and release” and “bail reform” initiatives barely impact the suburbs. Oh, the occasional Bob Lee will be a victim or some subway rider. However, the “disproportionate” population of people of color in jail awaiting trial were reported to police by their neighbors and acquaintances of similar color, because anybody that studies crime will tell you most violent crime is often between known associates.
“…no credible research that underlies these policies…”
Well, maybe not research, such as it is…
But there is a “credible”, purposeful, most effective, and historical PRECEDENT.
Let’s see now:
Unleashing massive inflation.
Sowing disorder.
Creating maximum confusion.
Fomenting chaos in the streets, in the home, in the schools, in the academy.
Destroying the family.
Decapitating the Armed Forces.
Aiming to disarm the populace.
Framing, focusing on and isolating “the enemy”.
Shredding the law.
Dissolving any and all difference between truth and lies.
Spreading uncertainty, fear and dissension throughout the land.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you—er, that is, the Democratic Party PROUDLY presents to you—Weimar 2.0.
(Because it worked so well the first time around….)
Nonetheless, it IS a tried and true method of pursuing, and achieving ultimate power…and it’s a “game” the Democrats and their allies from Planet Schwab, Solar-System Soros and the heavenly Gates—together with that halcyon pantheon that includes the CCP, the holy mullahs and the constellation of various international and transnational orgs—yea, even Putin—have no intention of losing.
I recently read an article in the City Journal about John Hughes, Archbishop of New York in the 1800’s. At the time, Irish in New York turned to be off the criminal class. He made a specific effort to improve their lot by creating drivers such as employment services, etc. He did an amazing job. Irish went from being “disproportionally represented” among the incarcerated in NYC to being police, fire fighters, domestic help, etc. in about one generation. And it don’t involve decriminalizing their crimes.
Read that proposal and ask yourself, are these people seriously concerned about gun violence?
“We need more gun laws” is just a politician’s dodge that signals that the person does not know what to do about crime. They never say, “We need to enforce the laws we have, put gun law violators into jail, and throw away the keys.”
There is a policy that worked to reduce crime in the 1990s and 2000s. It was called “broken-windows policing.”
of course they aren’t, now this didn’t come from (redacted) george gascon, but it might as well,
of course they aren’t serious,
https://www.realclearwire.com/articles/2023/03/15/feds_foreign-agent_double_standard_protective_of_bidens_even_as_they_bore_down_on_trumpworld_885544.html
I’ll be surprised if at some point ‘extralegal’ consequence does not begin to be visited upon the officials that are fomenting and enabling the violence. Hopefully, the consequence will be proportionate to the violence generated by these ideological fanatics.
Humans, or, at least, constantly developing humanoid-type mammals, have existed on this planet for about 1.5 million years; organized human simple operational groups for about 25,000; more refined and elaborate operational groups, about 10,000 or so; what we now term “advanced civilization” beginning a little over half of that ago.
Mammals seem to learn as they develop, both individually and in groups, and complexity of both the opreational structure and the interactions that come with it increase to take advantage of tat slow growth of understanding. And, while there’s a nearly infinite amount of knowledge that humans do not know, there’s a lot that humans do know, and nearly all of the operational knowledge comes from direct experience and putting non-direct learning into a wider range of understanding and utilization; when Og the pre-caveman got painfully burned touching a hot object Og could grunt and point to indicate to other group members touching a hot object had negative consequences, thereby spreading his direct knowledge. The result was Og’s associates and offspring did not necessarily need to each touch a hot object to gain such knowledge.
They learned, and eventually became able to more precisely communicate such accumulated knowledge more widely, to the the advantage of both individuals and groups.
I look around at what is happening in our culture and society today and wonder what went wrong, how millenia of knowledge and understanding about How Things Work have failed and failed so drastically. we joke about “what is the color of the sky in his world” but that’s actually a real question. What experiences, or influences, have so debased awareness, knowledge and understanding that it should be discarded in favor of random actions that contradict nearly everything learned, slowly and often expensively and painfully, over a couple million years.
“Mental illness” is often now listed as the cause and undoubtedly it exists, and per its “officialized” definitions, certainly in various, perhaps myriad, ways. How it became so widespread and influencial truly has me baffled.
And, if not that, then what is the cause of our current societal dysphoria?
I wonder if Og & Co. LLC might be available under contract as consultants.
(in actual fact, already paid in food stamps, welfare, etc, in the amount of perhaps thirty trillion, since LBJ’s “Great Society”)
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No clue how you got the idea that $30 tn have been paid out in SNAP (formerly Food Stamps) and in TANF (formerly AFDC) since 1965. The vast bulk of welfare spending is attributable to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and local public schools. Blacks are less likely than others to draw from the first two and not much more likely to draw from the last. As for Medicaid and other means-tested program, the only portion it would be legitimate to refer to as ‘reparations’ would be the difference between per capita expenditures on blacks and per capita expenditures on others, multiplied by the number of black beneficiaries. That method would account for about 40% of the budget for housing subsidies, 30% of the Medicaid budget, just over 22% of the TANF budget, about 15% of the SNAP budget, about 10% of the SSI budget, &c. Medicaid spending exceeds that of these others by about 4-fold.
Amadeus 48, you have said just what I was thinking. “Possession of firearm by a felon” is one of the crimes that won’t require bail. Why should we pass more gun control legislation when no one is enforcing the gun control measures that already exist? Clearly the call for gun control legislation has some other goal than reducing crime. Chipping away at the Second Amendment seems to be the real goal.
I’ll be surprised if at some point ‘extralegal’ consequence does not begin to be visited upon the officials that are fomenting and enabling the violence.
The conviction of the Army Sergeant in Austin TX and the arrest of the rancher in AZ are signs that self defense will not be tolerated by the left. Austin is a far left island in Texas and AZ just “elected” a Democrat governor who has vetoed 37 bills so far. The legislature is, of course, Republican.
Welp, social workers could be useful in law enforcement, first in the door.