Age of cruelty

Picking up a thought we left off on a few weeks ago, about the closing off of political possibilities evidenced by the permanent intransigence of the anti-vax phenomenon, it's time to get back to our regularly scheduled pessimism. Today we consider the same reasons we will have to live forever with anti-vax mania can explain why we will also live under an increasingly cruel criminal legal system.

Our working thesis here is that Americans do not engage politically with any expectation that public policy can open up a better future. Indeed, most Americans don't believe a better future even exists.  And so no one expects the state can or should improve our ever worsening social conditions.  Instead, everyone who expends any energy at all on public affairs just wants to make sure someone besides themselves has to suffer the most.  Which is precisely what laws like this are designed to accomplish.

Lanieux, who had been arrested for aggravated flight from an officer, was prosecuted under Louisiana’s controversial habitual offender law, sometimes known as a “three strikes and you’re out” rule. The statute allows district attorneys to significantly enhance sentences, often by decades, for people with previous felony convictions. 

The goal is to protect the public from unrepentant, violent criminals, but critics contend prosecutors have abused the law by targeting Black men. Louisiana’s population is 33% Black, but 79% of those convicted in the state as habitual offenders are Black, according to a report last year from the Public Welfare Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

Lanieux, who is Black, didn’t fit the profile of a violent repeat offender. He had been convicted for two drug possession felonies in the late 1990s, for which he received probation. But those, combined with the flight charge, were enough for prosecutors to apply the habitual offender statute.

“I ain’t never thought a two-year sentence would turn into life,” said Lanieux, who sat for 10 Zoom interviews with Verite News and ProPublica over six months from the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel. “They just throw you away for any little thing.”

No, the goal of habitual offender laws in not "to protect the public" from anything. The goal is to terrorize powerless people with an unmerciful, unjust and overwhelming police apparatus. Which, as you can see, is the exact purpose to which it has been applied.  As is the case with anti-vax, this is just mainstream politics at work now.  

The Verite article quoted above explains that despite a sustained, evidence-based criminal justice reform effort in the late 2010s, the ascendant reactionary movement is inevitably and swiftly wiping out any hope of progress. 

That’s when Louisiana’s attorney general, Jeff Landry, who is considered the front-runner in this fall’s gubernatorial election, stepped in, filing a legal challenge to the law. 

It is seen as part of a growing backlash across the country against prosecutors who have pushed for an end to mass incarceration. Former President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Landry, vowed to go after “Marxist” district attorneys who he said have allowed U.S. cities to be turned into “hellholes.” Florida governor and presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis echoed his political rival, boasting in August of his efforts to remove local prosecutors he accused of failing to uphold the law. 

Landry, a former police officer and sheriff’s deputy and an Army veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm, has blasted the 2017 reforms as a “disaster.” 

“We have incompetent mayors, and these woke district attorneys want to play a dangerous game of catch and release with criminals,” Landry said last year. “As governor we are just not going to put up with that.”

Quick note about bit where your next Governor is identified as an "Army veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm."  I have no idea why that information is relevant here. But as long as the reporter/editors decided to throw it in, they should have at least put it in the correct context. 

During the campaign, Landry caught criticism for claiming to be a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. It was technically true, but it had the effect of leaving many, including some in the media, with the mistaken impression that he had served overseas. In fact, he was stationed in Ft. Hood, Texas, reportedly working as a driver for a general.

Landry refused to acknowledge the obvious rhetorical puffery. “The only reason I didn’t go (to the Persian Gulf) is because the war ended so quickly,” he said. “I certainly never tried not to go.” 

Anyway, back to this matter of all politics being about finding someone to punish now. To illustrate this, let's take a look at what the "Marxist" District Attorney New Orleans elected under the mistaken impression he would change things here in the "hellhole"  is up to now. 

Upset with what he argues are low bails set in magistrate court, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams threatened to pull his prosecutors from first appearances if its commissioners don’t take accountability for decisions about jailing people suspected of crimes.

In a Tuesday letter to Criminal District Court Chief Judge Robin Pittman, Williams wrote that the court’s magistrate judge and its four commissioners often delve well below the bail recommendations of his prosecutors.

“I have strongly considered instructing my [prosecutors] to no longer appear at first appearance dockets,” Williams wrote, suggesting a move made by his predecessor, Leon Cannizzaro, to abandon those proceedings.

The guy who ran on a promise of ending cash bail says the bail is not high enough! Does Jeff Landry know about this?  Do you think he would like Jason better if he did? Hard to say, but just to be safe he's all charged up to throw some more kids into the dungeon. 

Williams’ call for higher bail amounts comes even as the city's jail population has swelled to its highest levels in at least four years — even as murders and other reported violent crimes, except for rape, have declined, according to publicly available data.

On Thursday, more than 1,220 people remained in custody at the Orleans Justice Center — a number last seen in August 2019. The jail population has increased by more than 20% this year, the data shows.

Despite Jason Williams's enthusiasm for high bail and mass incarceration, the leading candidates for Governor* continue to hammer away at his Marxist hellhole.  So far I've watched three gubernatorial debates this election season. During these, the Times-Picayune's newly endorsed Stephen Waguespack repeatedly called for harsher measures in New Orleans. Waguespack says he wants more surveillance and more arrests. During the LSU debate, he said that the French Quarter is "out of control" and endorsed Billy Nungesser's proposal to turn it into a state park. Jeff Landry's intentions toward the city are similarly aggressive. He recently told Tucker Carlson that “The place is being run like a third world-country," adding that as Governor he would use the most extreme measures available to "bend it to his will." 

Which raises the question, how much more cruel and punitive do Wags and Landry want our burgeoning police state to become? Because if conditions at the Parish Prison are any indication, things are pretty bad right now. 

Four jail supervisors walked out during their shifts inside the Orleans Justice Center on Friday following multiple fires, at least one stabbing and a feces-throwing incident in the lockup, the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office has confirmed.

The deputies returned to their posts later that day after speaking with sheriff's office brass.

OPSO spokesperson Casey McGee said low staffing, coupled with a swelling jail population, have created an environment conducive to fights, disciplinary infractions by incarcerated people and uses of force.

Uh oh the Sheriff's office is understaffed. I think we know what comes next.  Actually, it's already happened. Recall that earlier this year, Sheriff Hutson asked voters to approve an additional $13 million in property taxes to help her run these torture chambers. They said no but, clearly, it doesn't end there.

This is a classic scenario.  The more people they cram into the jail, the more staff the Sheriff needs to hire, the more money the Sheriff can demand.  It's the vicious cycle people were told they were electing this Sheriff and this DA to end. But here they are. Definitely not ending it. Instead they are each caving to political pressure to run the other direction.  No doubt the result of this fall's election will push them even further. 

Today, The Lens points out that the jail population is approaching a "cap" imposed by City Council in 2019.  What happens if it runs over?  Nobody knows. But given that our politics only favors more and harsher punishment for the least powerful, our guess is, probably nothing.

*FWIW the Democrat on these stages, Shawn Wilson responded "yes" to one of those rapid fire yes/no questions asking whether the State Police, in light of the fatal beating of Ronald Greene, have a racism problem.  A few moments later, however, Wilson ducked back in to apologize for that answer which he would like to change to "it's complicated."