Why didn’t someone ask Philadelphia?

Two weeks ago the Los Angeles Times published Releasing Inmates Early Has a Costly Human Toll. The article described LA County’s early release program and the disastrous results of putting convicted criminals back on the street prior to serving their complete sentences.

As a direct result of the article and the outcry that it caused, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca announced a policy shift in the program. Instead of treating first-time offenders and career criminals the same when deciding who to release early from jail, the Sheriff’s Department will now attempt to factor in their criminal pasts when making selections. Sadly, absolutely nothing is being done about the root problem at hand which is the circumvention of the system of judges, juries, and prosecutors who determine who should be in jail and for how long.

The real crime here is that none of the decision-makers in this process (specifically the county supervisors who control the sheriff’s budget) have bothered to factor in the social cost of the early release program. The social cost is rather easy to predict using readily available data so it’s surprising that no one bothered to do it. Early release means both more criminals on the street as well as a lowered deterrent to those considering committing crimes resulting in a predictable increase in violent and deadly crime.

It’s incredible that we require environmental impact reports for building projects or zoning changes but when it comes to unilateral release of 150,000 criminals back on to the streets there is no similar process by which to frame a debate. If the supervisors and the sheriff had said “we are thinking about releasing 150,000 criminals over the next four years that will likely result in an increased crime wave including murders, rapes, assaults and other violent crimes and here is the data to show it”, then it’s possible the outcry from voters would have compelled the supervisors to rethink their budget priorities.

In fact, if the LA County Supervisors had required an environmental impact report for the sheriff’s early release plan in 2002, here is what the EIR might have looked like:

Environmental Impact Report on LA Sheriff Early Release Program (2002):

The Plan to Release Criminals

Due to budget cuts imposed on it by the Los Angeles County Supervisors, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department proposes making the sentences carried out at the Los Angeles County Jail system among the weakest in the nation. We will achieve this distinction by implementing an aggressive program of releasing convicted individuals prior to serving their full sentences. In some cases, they will only be serving a fraction of the time mandated by the sentencing judges. Here is how our proposed program will work:

A. From now on, nearly everyone sentenced to 90 days or less will be let go immediately. Many others leave after serving no more than 10% of their time. Hardly any other city or county in the nation will be as aggressive as us in letting criminals go.

B. The Sheriff’s Department will not look at the criminal histories of the individuals in the early release program as it’s time-consuming to look at those files. A first-time offender will be treated the same as a career criminal. Also those with convictions for violent crimes will not be discriminated against when selecting who to put back on the street.

C. Decisions on who to release will be made somewhat arbitrarily. (For example prostitutes arrested in Compton shall serve 100% of their sentences while hardened gang members serving time for battery might be immediately let go.) We will not solicit the input of the prosecutors, judges, probation officers and especially not the victims–in fact we will ignore the sentencing directives of judges. Despite an entire judicial system that was used to determine how long these criminals should serve their sentences, we will use clerks in the Sheriff’s Department to make the sentencing decisions.

D. Sheriff’s officials will not track how often inmates are rearrested when they would otherwise have been behind bars. We are cops not accountants.

Here is the expected impact of the Early Release Program over the next 4 years

1. Approximately 150,000 criminals will be released prior to serving their full sentences.

2. 4,400 of these early releases will have been prosecuted for serious assaults.

3. A projected 500 robberies will be committed by members of our early release program during the period that they would otherwise have been in jail. What’s more, 1.400 Los Angeles County residents should be prepared to be assaulted by these same early release members and another 16 residents should plan on being murdered prior to the 4th year anniversary of the program.

4. Rearrests for violent and life-threatening crimes will soar sixty-fold.

The Sheriff’s Department kindly asks that the Los Angeles County Supervisors approve the early release program so we can immediately start letting people go.

While the above environmental impact was hypothetical (though the data is right out of the LA Times), it highlights how ineffectual the LA County Supervisors really are. The fact is that data on the effect of early release programs was readily and not surprisingly they always result increased crime and violence. The statistical predictions of how many new rapes, murders, assaults one can expect is a rather easy forecast by looking at national statistics and the results of other early release programs. Here is an article on the subject from 1994 (6 years before LA decided to implement its program]:

“The effects of these [early release] policies have been dramatic: early releases have been a major factor in high levels of violent crime. Nationally, almost one-third of all violent crimes are committed by people on pre-trial release, probation, or parole.”

The present day Times’ analysis also showed that by releasing inmates early you not only have the issue of putting violent criminals back on the street but the programs compounds the problem by eroding the deterrent to crime since would-be criminals have less of a fear of being locked up even if they are caught. In other words you have more criminals on the street who are less fearful of the consequences of getting caught. This is a bad combination. It is no surprise that re-arrests of criminals released early were 4-fold over re-arrests of criminals not released early.

Why didn’t the LA supervisors just look at Philadelphia?

In 1986, the City of Philadelphia entered into a consent decree that limited the number of people who could be held in Philadelphia’s jails. The result was a blood-chilling crime wave.

In just 18 months, police rearrested 9,732 defendants released early. These early releasers were charged with 79 murders, 959 robberies, 2,215 drug dealing crimes, 701 burglaries, 2,748 thefts, 90 rapes, 14 kidnappings, 1,113 assaults, 264 gun-law violations and 127 drunk-driving incidents.

For those of you who don’t live in Los Angeles you might be wondering how did it get to this point? Just ask Los Angeles prosecutor/blogger Patterico whose pointed posting places the blame squarely on voters who have continually re-elected the notoriously inefficient LA County Supervisors who spend far more time in photo ops than addressing the county’s numerous problems. Sadly the public is now paying the consequences of the supervisors inability to manage the county.

Here is a recap of the last four years of the early release program. (Note to LA residents: Isn’t it about time that this be addressed?)

Released early 148,229
Rearrested 15,775
Charged with assault 1,443
Charged with robbery 518
Charged with a sex offense 215
Charged with murder 16

More than a fourth of those rearrested were charged with violent or life-endangering crimes, including 518 robberies, 215 sex offenses, 641 weapons violations, 635 drunk-driving incidents, 1,443 assaults and 20 kidnappings.

And how is the LA Board of Supervisors responding to all of this? According to the Times, they are demanding the Sheriff’s Department generate a report about screening criminals released early. Oh good, a report! Note the absence of any talk of eliminating or reducing the number of criminals reduced early? Yes the team responsible for the nightmares at King/Drew continues in its fine form.

Note: if one wonders what these fine representatives do, read this about Steve Lopez’s excellent column on the subject.

Update: Read about the “celebrity edition” of the early release program featuring Michelle Rodriguez.

tags: los angeles LA County LA Sheriff crime prison baca

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 9:11 pm by Insider and is filed under Los Angeles Times, California Schemin', Your Tax Dollars In Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.