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." 

Susan Hutson will have plenty time to get more buy-in (or buy more people off) later

Susan Hutson's float (seen from way across the street because I had COVID) rolls down St. Charles Avenue in the Legion of Mars parade in February 

New Orleans's fav reformist Sheriff has not had a great time of things since her glorious elevation to that office. Maybe she just hasn't figured out how all the knobs and buttons work on the jail machine yet. Or maybe that whole notion about being able to steer the prison industrial industrial complex in wise directions from the inside needs to be rethought. Of course, Hutson would tell you, it just needs more money.

Sheriff Susan Hutson has quietly placed a question on this ballot that would expand OPSO's current property tax millage from 2.8 mils to 5.5 for the next ten years boosting her annual budget by about $13 million. Hutson hasn't offered a detailed description of her plans for the funding increase. She has called it a "compliance millage" which would imply that it is meant to help bring the jail into compliance with the dictates of federal oversight. But most of the money seems designated for staff raises and an, as yet, incomplete list of building improvements. As is often the case with the infamously opaque and unaccountable Sheriff's department, voters are just expected to trust whoever holds the office. In that regard, Hutson hasn't exactly inspired confidence.

There are three things that this Saturday's ballot measure would do and all of them are bad. 1) It will double the funding available to one of the most corrupt and unaccountable patronage wells in the city. 2) It will double the funding available to a jail that should by rights be emptied and closed.  3) It will also raise taxes on homeowners already getting nailed with rising insurance premiums. Landlords will inevitably pass these costs on to renters.  And of course the revenue generated creates no social benefit.

The thing is, it's not likely to pass. Not this time, anyway.  Every organization that regularly weighs in on such matters has come out against it. All of them have, in various ways, criticized the proposed millage because Hutson has no concrete plan for how it is to be spent. Which raises questions given how she spends money now. For example, DSA (one of the many orgs in opposition who I happen to be quoting here) points to this.

During this past Carnival season, Hutson's office was charged with coordinating the city's last minute mad scramble to staff parade routes with supplemental police and sheriff's deputies from around the state.  Law enforcement agencies have made it an annual routine to hold Mardi Gras hostage in order to shake down the city for money. This act has only grown more farcical in recent years and, this year, Hutson's participation has drawn particular scrutiny. According to reports, the Sheriff booked 13 or 15 hotel rooms for what looks like as many as 11 days and nights during the Carnival season, ostensibly for her staff and deputies. No audit can show exactly who used the rooms, though. After the story became a public controversy, Hutson announced the $18,000 hotel bill would be covered through private donations. This only raises further ethical questions, however. So does an expenditure of over $15,000 on a "conflict coaching" consultant to deal with the understandable push back from dissenting advisors among her staff. That money was poorly spent also. Hutson went ahead and fired four of her top staff anyway. At least one of them is considering filing for whistleblower status.

But after this proposal fails, it will be interesting to see what happens next.  The Sheriff's current millage doesn't actually expire until next year. So this is more of a trial balloon than a make or break gambit. I think the other reason it's on the ballot now is City Council already denied Hutson's request for the same amount of money last November so this would have been one way to work around that. In any case, it's just as likely we'll see a similar proposal appear on a future ballot.  The difference to watch out for then will be to see who, among the current coaliton of dissenters, will have been bought off ... er.. brought on board by then.

Lock it up

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus in the US, elected leaders at every level have struggled and failed to agree on an effective and consistent policy response to contain it. Rules promulgated for public gatherings, mask wearing, and business operations have had wide variance from town to town or state to state.  Over the past year, these rules have expanded and contracted again in "phases" shaped not so much by the public health interest as by political pressure from influential wealth holders.  

A mayor might shut down some events because the cases are spiking but keep inviting tourists to town anyway.  A school board might cave to pressure from bosses to open and deprive parents of an excuse not to come in to work. But if the virus spreads among the school population, officials have plenty of excuses on hand as to why that isn't their fault.

This is the sixth week that the district has reported cases on its website. While there have been new cases each week, officials say they are relatively small numbers and Avegno said new cases don’t appear to come from the classroom. 

“Where we are seeing cases is in gatherings and extracurricular activities outside school. So the slumber party … and we have seen some outbreaks on athletic teams,” she said, noting there hadn’t been athletic outbreaks in the two weeks.

“With teachers, if it’s more than one teacher, it’s if they went out to dinner after school,” Avegno said. “Just like office spread, like in a breakroom. That’s not anything unique to schools.”

Hotel stays, yes. "Slumber parties," no.  Bars and restaurants are open but only the ones that serve the tourists. The more local clientele had better stay home... especially if they happen to be teachers. And this has been the situation in every city and in every state. The resulting chaos has claimed hundreds of thousands more lives than were ever necessary while piling ever greater fortune upon the world's billionaire class. 

Remarkably this situation has only been made worse by the arrival of the vaccines this year.  Policymakers could have taken advantage of the clear "light at the end of the tunnel" offered by vaccination. They could have heeded the advice of most health experts to keep restrictions in place for a few more months until a significant portion of the population was vaccinated.  Instead they quickly shifted into Mission Accomplished mode and loosened the rules around all sorts of activities. It's quite likely that the resulting sense in the public that the pandemic is already over has slowed the pace of vaccinations thus extending the threat further and endangering even more lives. 

Now as the virus seems to be spreading once again, Governors and mayors are even more hesitant than before to take the steps necessary to stop it. Many of them, in fact, are giving up altogether. 

And this spring, many American mayors are explaining their decision to leave office with the same reason: that the pandemic response demanded so much that they could not both campaign and perform their duties; or that the work had become so stressful that their families had recommended that they step away.

“They are just spent,” said Katharine Lusk, executive director of Boston University’s Initiative on Cities, which carries out an annual survey of mayors. Mayors surveyed last summer expressed deep anxiety about the effects of lost tax revenue on their budgets, as they juggled the pandemic, economic recovery and their core responsibilities.

Meanwhile the ones who have decided to stick it out are content to leave it all up to the vaccines and shift the blame for anything that goes wrong to the "personal responsibility" of individuals to take them. Inevitably this will mean more people will die than have to. But that's all part of the political cost/benefit analysis. 

Anyway it's only appropriate now that we're back to doing the bare minimum to protect the public health that the one thing we know we can do about the coronavirus is put it in jail. That is going about how you might expect.

Starting in March of last year, New York Times reporters tracked every known coronavirus case in every correctional setting in the United States, including state and federal prisons, immigrant detention centers, juvenile detention facilities, and county and regional jails.

We measured the pandemic’s excruciating impact on prisoners using records requests and interviews with people from all corners of the system. We spoke with incarcerated people and their families, prison wardens, jailers, prosecutors, defense attorneys and civil rights groups.

A year later, one in three inmates in state prisons are known to have had the virus, the data shows. In federal facilities, at least 39 percent of prisoners are known to have been infected. The true count is most likely higher because of a dearth of testing, but the findings align with reports from The Marshall Project and the Associated Press, U.C.L.A. Law and The COVID Prison Project that track Covid-19 in prisons.

The virus has caused misery and loss in many places, but its destructive power has been felt intensely among the incarcerated, who have been infected at rates several times higher than those of their surrounding communities.

Last week, The Lens reported that only a quarter of the  more than 800 people detained at the Orleans Parish jail have been vaccinated. That is a rate comparable with the city's population at large.  The state prisons are a bit behind.  But, as the same article points out, prison is a particularly dangerous place to be during a pandemic. 

Throughout the pandemic, prisons and jails have been particularly vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19 due to the inability of prisoners to social distance. There have been over 3,000 reported cases of the virus in Louisiana’s prisons, according to data from the DOC, and 36 people have died.

And so you may be thinking all of this should raise the obvious question, why are we still putting so many people in jail? Of course we should be asking that question anyway but especially now, under these circumstances, why are we needlessly endangering more lives?  Well, actually, that question was already asked of the mayor under arguably more dangerous circumstances during the height of the pandemic last year.  Here is what she said.

She has stoutly resisted more recent pressure from advocacy groups urging that police release nonviolent suspects from custody. “You’re worried about criminals catching coronavirus? Tell them to stop breaking the damn law,” snaps Cantrell, a streetwise woman known for her salty tongue.

Yesterday we watched yet another horrific instance of state cruelty in the form of body cam footage of yet another cop murdering yet another Black person for "breaking the damn law" against having an air freshener hanging from a mirror. Do those of us who are worried about that require a similar talking to from a "streetwise salty tongue?" Or is the summary death sentence for minor offense only acceptable when administered by virus instead of by gunshot?

In other words, he skipped bail

You have to admit it has a certain elegance to it. 

The Louisiana Supreme Court set up new rules this year to quell public criticism over its secretive system for disciplining judges accused of misconduct.

But the first judge to face public charges under those attempts at transparency, Orleans Parish Magistrate Judge Harry Cantrell, is about to run out the clock. He'll be leaving the bench and a stack of ethical complaints behind him -- with no public disciplinary hearing, much less a blot on his judicial record.

Judge Cantrell will leave the bench without having faced any consequences for his overly harsh, obnoxiously so, in fact, treatment of defendants and their lawyers who had the nerve to object to his bail policies even though a federal court found them to be unconstitutional. 

Among other things, Cantrell was accused of “willful misconduct” and “persistent and public conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the judicial office into disrepute.”

From the bench, he launched or threatened contempt-of-court proceedings against defense attorneys who requested bond for their clients in amounts below a $2,500 floor that he’d adopted. That sparked a federal civil rights lawsuit that forced an overhaul of the court’s funding scheme.

And yet now it is Judge Cantrell who is skipping out on bail.  And that many not even be the biggest irony here.  For that we need to look at the reason the judge was able to postpone his matter past the expiration of his term.

Cantrell requested, and received, an extension to this week, saying that COVID-19 concerns had slowed depositions and subpoena returns. A new hearing date was set over three days to begin Monday. Recently, it was recently “continued without date.”

In and of itself, that seems proper.  But consider the judge's lack of consideration for accused persons in his own courtroom and it seems less like justice. Makes one wonder what his daughter-in-law might say.

She has stoutly resisted more recent pressure from advocacy groups urging that police release nonviolent suspects from custody. “You’re worried about criminals catching coronavirus? Tell them to stop breaking the damn law,” snaps Cantrell, a streetwise woman known for her salty tongue.

Best healthcare system in the world

It's possible that over the weekend, some people may have noticed a news item or two indicating that President Trump had checked into Walter Reed hospital where he was treated for COVID-19.  It's okay if you missed it. But it's something that people were talking about. 

Anyway one of the things that got some attention was the President's treatment regime.  He tweeted this afternoon that it involved some "really great drugs and knowledge."  Unfortunately the information coming from his doctors is not exactly clear. But, as far as we know, here is some of what that might have entailed. 

Trump got one dose of Regeneron's monoclonal antibody cocktail -- a combination of two lab-engineered proteins designed to home in on the coronavirus. He also had received the first infusion of a five-day course of remdesivir, Gilead Science's experimental antiviral drug.

Conley indicated the Walter Reed team was giving Trump a variety of therapies -- an approach many doctors are taking in treating coronavirus patients, who suffer a wide range of symptoms.

"Remdesivir works a little bit differently than the antibodies. We are maximizing all aspects of his care. Attacking this virus in a multipronged approach," Conley said.

"If there was any possibility that it would add value to his care and expedite his care, I wanted to take it."

It's not surprising, said Dr. Seema Yasmin, director of research and education at Stanford University's Health Communication Initiative. 

"This is the President of the United States -- he is going to have the kitchen sink thrown at him," Yasmin told CNN.

Multipronged, kitchen sink approach involving all these cutting edge treatments.  We really can do remarkable things in health care here in the good ol US of A. It's sure great to the be the President of this country. 

It's less great to be in jail in Orleans Parish, though.  They treat the COVID differently there, apparently. 

And Dixon wasn’t the only one who felt the effects of the pepper spray. It dispersed throughout the rest of the tier, which at the time was housing around a dozen other detainees who had tested positive for coronavirus. 

“Yeah it got into our cells,” said the detainee. “All of us were all beating on the doors telling the people we can’t breathe, to open the outside door where they have a rec yard so it can air out.  We were telling them we can’t breathe, they were telling us we can’t go outside and air out.”

“By inhaling that stuff, it’s so strong,” he said. “We tested positive for the corona, and it was getting in our system. We were coughing and gagging in our cells.”

Following the incident, according to Dixon and the other inmate, Dixon was returned to his cell on the COVID tier and kept there for several days without being given the opportunity to shower or make any phone calls. 

“They put me in the cell with no shower, nothing to clean it off me,” Dixon said. 

The only medical attention he received, Dixon said, was being given Tylenol to help with his wrist and ankles, which had become swollen from the cuffs and shackles.

Nowhere to wash off the pepper spray... not even a kitchen sink.

It's no utopia

The federal monitors say Gusman's jail is still not ready to come out of.. uh.. detention.  A few months ago, Gusamn complained that he was being held to an unreasonable "jail utopia" standard. But this seems like the bar he's failing to clear is a good deal lower than that.

Reviews of deaths and near-death attempts like suicide attempts “remain perfunctory and they lack self-critical analysis,” according to the report.

Meanwhile, despite reams of policies and years of concern around suicide attempts, precautions remain lacking. Although the monitors conducted their tour of the jail in late May virtually due to the coronavirus outbreak, they still saw obvious shortfalls.

On one virtual round of the jail’s mental health unit, the monitors spotted an inmate making a rope out of a blanket, and a nursing assistant was chatting with a deputy instead of monitoring inmates on suicide watch.

Maybe next time if they find inmates trying to tunnel out with spoons rather than fashion ropes out of blankets, that will be a sign that morale is up at least. 

Ideally, we wouldn't put anybody in jail at all.  But our political leadership has demonstrated at several points that even during a pandemic, their first priority is "law and order" and punishing people, in general.

This doesn't say anything about the jail budget.  The city has indicated that it believes the jail may be ready to come out from under the consent decree.  And the mayor has even more emphatically called for an end to federal monitoring of NOPD. But in both cases the city's position seems primarily motivated by cost.

Others have argued that it would save a lot of money to de-fund the police and get rid of the jail altogether. But, again, no one in leadership here takes any of that seriously.

Jailtopia

Sometimes you really gotta hand it to Gusman. He's ready to get out of jail administrator jail and go back to just regular running the jail, which it seems like it what's about to happen. But he also can't help getting in a few parting shots.  This is almost too perfect.

In a combative, 44-page court brief, Gusman tossed his sharpest knives at the monitors deployed by U.S. District Judge Lance Africk, claiming that they’ve held him to an unreasonably high standard.

“Continued enforcement of the Consent Decree seeks a jail utopia, reflective of the court-appointed monitors’ personal preferences and idealistic aspirations, not the ‘narrowly drawn…least intrusive means necessary to correct the violation’ requirement that controls prospective relief for jail conditions,” Gusman said, quoting a federal law that limits lawsuits against jails and prisons.

Rather than creating a perfect prison, Gusman said the standard that should apply is “the constitutional minimum.”

Is he saying he feels like he's been denied due process?  That's just great.  Anyway, kudos to Sledge for going ahead and listing the ways in which Gusman's jail has failed to meet the "utopian" standard.

Gusman doesn’t mention the 11 subsequent inmate deaths, including the haunting suicide of 15-year-old inmate Jaquin Thomas, riots, high staff turnover and sexual harassment allegations or the 87 inmates infected with the novel coronavirus.

The agency's handling of the coronavirus outbreak could become an issue at the hearing on Gusman's request, Schlanger said. The consent decree includes requirements for adequate medical care and sanitation.

In his filing, the sheriff also paints himself as a leader in the push to downsize the jail after Katrina, without mentioning that he fought the New Orleans City Council for a lock-up that would have been smaller than the old jail complex, but would have still held 4,300 beds. Over his objections, the council approved one with 1,438 beds.

What is the constitutionally mandated minimum number of suicides, riots, and deaths allowed of the course of a monitoring agreement, anyway?

Clusters

We keep seeing the word "cluster" used to describe multiple cases of COVID 19 positives discovered in one spot.  So far the state has identified six so-called clusters of cases in nursing homes where many individuals live together in more less confined close quarters.  This might be the last we learn about them.

A cluster is identified as two or more cases that appear to be connected.

But, the state said, it will no longer identify the facilities: "With the involvement of hospitals and multiple providers and the growth in cases of nursing home residents, the Department of Health will no longer be reporting where positive cases have been identified," the Department of Health said in a statement.

But the conditions that make them likely aren't too difficult to predict.  Which is why it's a good idea to take preventative measures while we can. 

In New Orleans, the public defenders’ motion was sweeping in its breadth. The agency called for the release of anyone in the jail whose age or poor health puts them at greater risk, all inmates held on misdemeanor charges, almost all inmates held on nonviolent charges, all inmates who are being detained on suspected parole violations and anyone within 30 days of finishing their sentence.

The request to release aged and sickly inmates would apply even to defendants awaiting trial on violent felony crimes.

Cannizzaro's statement in this article is set in sympathetic language but he still doesn't sound agreeable to helping.  Last week he sounded like he would be fine just locking up all the COVID cases in town like some sort of leper colony.  So maybe this is an improvement.

Leon's death camps

Cannizzaro wants to keep everybody locked up in unsafe conditions..... you know.. for safety.

As the Orleans Parish Public Defenders office attempts to get as many people out of jail as possible amid the spread of the new coronavirus, prosecutors with the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office are arguing against bond reductions for some defendants, arguing in part that they will pose a “threat to the community” through the spread of the virus if released.

The bail industry

Doing pretty good business in this city according to a new report released this week by the Vera Insitute.

The report argues that money bail and conviction fees are unjust, disproportionately harm black people, do not increase public safety and end up unnecessarily costing taxpayers.

“The extraction of wealth is a terrible suppression of economic and racial equity in this city,” Jon Wool, the Director of Justice Policy at Vera’s New Orleans office and one of the co-authors of the report, told The Lens.

According to the report, in 2017 New Orleans residents paid $6.8 million dollars for bail fees and premiums and $1.9 million in conviction fees. The majority of those costs — 88 percent of bail premiums and 69 percent of conviction fees — were paid by black families.

The current system of money bail also fails to keep the city safe, the report argues.

“In New Orleans, 65 percent of people arrested for the most serious crimes or who are flagged as high risk for other reasons avoid jail by paying bail,” the report says. Meanwhile, it claims, many are incarcerated simply because they can’t afford to bond out.

“We are using government’s most oppressive  tool — incarceration — in circumstances where it’s wholly unwarranted,” Wool said. “And it singles out poor people and black people, all in the name of raising revenues for government agencies and politically powerful for-profit industry.”

“That’s morally wrong. Bad policy, and morally wrong.”

Vera's report further proposes that by ending the cash bail system, the city can actually save as much as $8 million a year which it should spend on the courts, the DA, and the public defender and eliminate the "user pay" system that currently prevails. 

But, of course, it won't be that simple. People have vested interests in maintaining the $8.7 million industry as it is. DA Cannizzaro sounds like he's making his pushback against reforms a central theme of his reelection campaign. During the recent legislative session, lawmakers voted to bail out the bail bondsmen, so to speak, by retroactively approving $6 million worth of new fees they had been sticking their customers with. And, of course, the Mayor recently endorsed a plan that allows judges to lock up more juvenile defendants by ignoring a standard risk assessment tool.

So there's a lot of heavy lifting to come still if we want to get out from under this oppressive system.  Here's the link to Vera's report. 

How they throw away the key

If you go to jail in Louisiana, don't get too attached to the idea that, at the end of your sentence, they're actually going to let you out. Technically, they're supposed to but, you know, there's so much paperwork.

In 2005, a federal district court judge in Atlanta wrote she had been “unable to find any case... in which the detainment of a properly identified individual for days beyond his scheduled release date was held constitutionally permissible.”

That judge, Julie E. Carnes, who is now the Senior U.S. Circuit Judge in the 11th Circuit’s Court of Appeal, made the statement as part of a ruling on litigation by jailed people in Atlanta who sued a sheriff and the State of Georgia. The plaintiffs in that case had been overdetained by an average 3.9 days, court records show.

Despite those rulings, the Louisiana Department of Corrections appears to give itself in many cases anywhere from a few weeks to several months to process and release inmates. When New Orleans public defender Stanislav Moroz contacted the sheriff’s office to ask why Traweek was still in jail seven days after he was sentenced to time-served, OPSO employee Monique Filmore wrote back, “First of all Johnny Traweek was just sentenced on 5/2/18 so his paperwork has not went up yet.”

When Moroz checked in with OPSO five days later, Filmore reasponded, “He can’t get released until DOC sends him a release. The whole process takes about 2 weeks. He has to wait!!!!”

Meanwhile, an outgoing message on a DOC hotline states that “it takes at least 90 days after sentencing” for the department to calculate how much time a person must serve of their sentence. Only after this step is completed will DOC issue an official release date.

And that's "time served" can end up leaving you in jail for weeks or months. Some of the cases in this article end up tacking on years when the Sheriff and the Department of Corrections apply the Sewerage and Water Board billing system to calculating release dates.

A 2017 state auditor’s report on how DOC manages inmate data blasted the department as being incapable of calculating in an accurate and consistent manner how much time people should spend in prison and when they should be released.

For example, the auditor asked two DOC staffers to “calculate release dates on the same offender, and each used a different method. The two results differed by 186 days.” That would be a difference of about six months more in prison.

The haphazard manner in which DOC calculates time is one of the main drivers of overdetention and has resulted in multiple lawsuits, two of which the department recently settled for a total $250,000, records show. 

And this sort of thing happens all the time, apparently. Sure leaving people who have already served their sentences to sit indefinitely in dungeons is inhumane, expensive, and unconstitutional. But you gotta understand, not doing it is hard work.

In DOC’s official response to the legislative audit, Secretary James LeBlanc defended his staff, writing that the calculation of releases dates is a “very complex and ever changing” process that considers up to 20 different criteria. It is complicated even further, he said, by the Legislature passing new laws every year – such as 2017’s historic criminal justice reform package – which drastically alter the sentencing guidelines.

“Training for this job is ongoing and takes time to truly understand the intricacies of how each case is handled,” LeBlanc wrote. “Time computation staff are expected to know all laws, old and new.”

That same staff consists largely of people in entry-level jobs who collectively work on an average of 4,213 files per month, according to DOC. The staff’s turnover rate in 2017 was 33 percent. It dropped to an still-high 21 percent last year.

I suppose you could mitigate some of this instability by hiring more staff and paying solid wages and benefits but that's just crazy talk. Much better to waste that money housing prisoners at $54.20 per day per inmate for months and years longer than necessary.

In-app purchases

Gusman thought he had himself a nice deal on some software. But, see, that's how they get you sometimes.

The new software and database package from Texas-based Tyler Technologies was supposed to revolutionize the jail’s aging tech infrastructure. But officials say that after Gusman signed the contract in March 2017, they realized it would never live up to their expectations without further, costly modifications.

Criminal District Court judges and clerks also worried that the new tech package would cripple their access to information without more pricey plug-ins.

With the cancellation of the contract on Nov. 26, it could take years and at least $3 million more before the jail receives a new system.

Sobering center

What is it? 

New Orleans City Council members said Monday (Sept. 24) one of their budget priorities for 2019 will be a sobering center they believe could relieve pressure on hospitals and law enforcement. Such a facility is expected to cost $700,000 annually

Who gets taken there? 

"There needs to be a place where non-violent individuals can be taken to sober up," Moreno said, "so that these individuals aren't just left passed out on the street, as we so often unfortunately see, or that these individuals don't end up taken to jail or using an ER bed they don't need to."

Moreno said that because the city jail doesn't accept intoxicated people, someone who is picked up will either go to an emergency room or left on the street. That, she said, "is unacceptable."

Why is it "unacceptable" to just leave "non-violent individuals" alone?  Why do we have to take them to Not-Jail?  How long do they stay in Not-Jail?  Do they have the power to just not-arrest you and take you there without telling a judge?  How is this not a jail, exactly?

Okay so what is a "neutral hearing"?

This looks like a pretty good ruling in the "debtors's prison" lawsuit. (Basically, it says Orleans Parish operates one and that is bad and we shouldn't do that.)But it still isn't clear what the remedy is.

On Friday, Vance declared that "undisputed evidence" shows the 13 judges of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court have "a policy or practice of not inquiring into criminal defendants' ability to pay before those individuals are imprisoned for nonpayment of court debts."

She also declared that the judges have an "institutional conflict of interest" in making such poverty determinations themselves.

That's because the proceeds from fines and fees go directly to the court's Judicial Expense Fund, a kitty controlled by the judges that can be used for a broad range of judicial expenses. Fines and fees have contributed about $1 million a year to the court's coffers.

Vance ruled that the court's failure to "provide a neutral forum for determination of such persons' ability to pay is unconstitutional."

The decision appears to leave it up to the court to decide how to set up a mechanism for such decisions.

So a lot depends on how they decide to do that.

Still out of compliance

The specialist appointed to do Marlin Gusman's job for him has failed.

Less than two weeks after a damning report from federal monitors called the New Orleans jail “critically unsafe,” the lockup’s court-appointed administrator has resigned.

U.S. District Judge Lance Africk said Monday he had accepted the resignation of Gary Maynard, who has run the jail’s day-to-day operations as compliance director since October 2016. Africk said he has appointed Darnley R. Hodge, who currently serves as a jail monitor, as acting director effective Feb. 19.

Next man up, right?  Can't wait for Gusman (who has been largely sidelined during this period) to launch his, "See? This really is a hard job" reelection campaign.

Stupid or lying or... ?

One important way in which I tend to read news and politics differently from a lot of my liberal fellow travelers is I almost never assume that the "other side" is over there on the other side because of simple stupidity or ignorance.  Like the great majority of Americans, I'm kind of stupid and not especially expert in any one thing. I figure most people are pretty much just like me. It follows, then, that if I have read about or have a basic understanding something, then whoever I'm talking to probably knows it as well or better than I do. So it's not incumbent on me to educate anyone.

In public affairs, there usually isn't one "right" answer that can satisfy everyone if only the "stupid other side" would be less stupid.  Political questions are not about finding the most inherently good policy but are instead about what policy choice will benefit whom. So those people on the other side, they're not stupid. They're just full of shit.

Take this peculiar City Council vote yesterday over bail reform, for instance.  

A meeting that started with skepticism about a measure to essentially eliminate bail for nonviolent crimes at New Orleans' Municipal Court boiled over Monday into ill-tempered spats among City Council members and recriminations between advocates seeking to end the practice and judges and bail bondsmen fighting to keep the status quo.

After a Criminal Justice Committee meeting that lasted more than three hours, the measure failed to garner enough support from council members to be formally sent on to the full City Council. However, Councilwoman Susan Guidry, the sponsor of the proposed ordinance, said she planned to bring a revised version back in the future.

Here is the problem Guidry's ordinance is attempting to address.  The jail is a profit center for people whose business depends on collecting ransom for minor offenses. Inevitably this penalizes those who can't afford to pay the ransom.  A recent Vera Institute study showed fourteen percent of the jail population at the time of the survey were there simply because they couldn't afford to be out.

Out of the 451 people in jail who were assessed for risk and given a risk score, 216—or 48 percent—were found to present a low or low-moderate risk. Those 216 people represented 14 percent of the entire jail population.

These low and low-moderate risk arrestees were held in jail because a judge decided they had to pay a financial bond to get out. One-hundred and eighteen of them were held on a $25,000 bail or less, an unaffordable sum to many: New Orleans’s poverty rate is almost twice the national average. Eighty-five percent of people who go through the criminal justice system are too poor to hire a lawyer.

That isn't hard to understand. Guidry made the point again, though, just to be certain everyone heard it.

"We're talking about misdemeanor charges that are nonviolent, and the only people who get stuck in jail before their first appearance are the ones who can't come up with those few hundred dollars," Guidry said. "Are we saying poor people are by their nature more dangerous?"

Which is why, if you take the actions and statements of the councilpersons at face value, you have to conclude that all of them except for CM Guidry, are unbelievably stupid. You might think Jason Williams was so stupid he didn't know what the ordinance said.

Williams said he had concerns the plan would not provide enough scrutiny for those accused of domestic violence, although the ordinance requires they be held until a judge has time to evaluate them, and it could still allow for some kind of bond.

More broadly, he argued that if the city wants to reduce the number of people languishing in jail, it should stop arresting people, rather than changing how bail is treated.

"The real issue here is arresting people who we as a community don't believe should be arrested or detained at all," Williams said, specifically questioning whether the Police Department is abiding by council policies aimed at making sure they are not targeting black residents for arrest.

He certainly has a point about the police department although the two problems are hardly mutually exclusive. He knows this, though. He's just full of shit.

You might also think Stacy Head is so stupid she doesn't understand what a nonviolent crime like those addressed by the ordinance actually is.

Head, who usually is an ally of Guidry, seemed skeptical of the proposal, repeatedly suggesting that something is needed to keep people who are "raping and pillaging" the community in jail. But she later said Guidry's plan could work with some changes to narrow its scope.

She just wanted to say "raping and pillaging" a lot, probably.  Notice, though, that Head ended up supporting the ordinance anyway.  Why? Well we're getting to that. First, take a look at Sheriff Gusman and his pastor friends.  

The financial issue is also a key part of the thrust behind the ordinance, as Guidry and others on the council have sought for years to whittle down the jail population. Sheriff Marlin Gusman has fought against those plans, and a group of pastors who have previously backed him were among those opposing the ordinance Monday.

You might think a lot of these pastors would be sympathetic to the bail reform. It's likely the problem Guidry describes is affecting members of their own flocks in disproportionate numbers. Are they just stupid? Nah.. more likely they're more sensitive to parishioners with money to donate. 

This is from another argument between the Vera Institute and some of these pastors over a pre-trial services program with a similar aim as Guidry's bail reform. 

Stuart was followed at the microphone by the Rev. Tom Watson, the senior pastor at Watson Memorial Teaching Ministries, who complained that Vera got its role screening accused criminals for pre-trial release without competitive bidding.

“That’s unfair and unjust,” Watson said. “I call them carpetbaggers. We have a lot of people who could go to the jails (and screen the defendants) for a lot less.”

A second pastor, the Rev. Joseph Merrill, of New Kingdom Missionary Baptist Church, said it was “nonsense” to have “folks from New York come to try to solve our problem.”

Merrill was followed by bail bondsman Matt Dennis, owner of dennisbonding.com, who said the Vera program “is turning the offender into a victim.” He added, “They’re trying to drive us out of business.”

The pre-trial program represents a financial threat to the bondsmen because the defendants get released without having to post bond.

The back-and-forth comments prompted a response from only one City Council member, Susan Guidry.

Guidry, who chairs the council’s criminal justice committee, said Vera had come to New Orleans in 2007 at the council’s request and was involved in discussions for two years before this year’s program began. She said the Justice Department chose Vera, which is why the program had not been put to through competitive bidding process. “It would be a very big mistake for us to pull the people who have been with the program for two years,” Guidry said. “It’s been a success.”

The Rev. Antoine Barriere, senior pastor at Household of Faith Family Worship Church International, had earlier endorsed Vera’s work before the council, saying the project “was going in the right direction.”

Afterward, in an interview, Barriere said the opposition to Vera surprised him since the critics had just surfaced.

“Now they come in and divide everyone,” Barriere said. “Somebody is connected to somebody who is getting bail bond money.”

Simply put, there's a lot of money in the sleazy business of leveraging the criminal justice system to extract profits from the vulnerable.  Those councilmembers who voted to maintain that system aren't stupid. They're benefiting from it.  Similarly, those who voted to shut it down.. including the reluctant Head despite her "rape and pillage" crowing... aren't benefiting and are jealous of those who are.

None of these actors is stupid. They're all acting rationally.  But none of them is doing anything simply because it's the objectively moral policy choice.

Substitute Sheriff

Looks like there's a new sheriff in town. Sort of, anyway.  Gusman picked his court ordered "compliance director" today; i.e. the guy who will supposedly do most of his job for him until the consent decree is lifted.

Gary D. Maynard, 73, essentially will become a surrogate for Sheriff Marlin Gusman, assuming operational control of the Orleans Justice Center as he seeks to implement a series of court-ordered reforms that have languished for three years. He will be known formally as the jail's "independent compliance director."

The sheriff, announcing the appointment at a news conference Thursday, touted Maynard's four decades of corrections experience and called him "a welcome addition to our team."

At no point during the press conference did anyone in attendance mutter the word, "Awwwwkwaarrd" under his or her breath.

For his part, Maynard says he's looking forward to the "big challenge." 

He also is no stranger to controversy, having served at the helm of the Maryland prison system at a time when more than a dozen guards were indicted for misconduct at the notorious Baltimore City Detention Center on racketeering and drug charges.

A federal investigation revealed that a group of corrupt corrections officers aided an inmate gang in smuggling drugs and cellphones into the lockup.

Maynard resigned his position in December 2013 to join the Criminal Justice Institute, a nonprofit organization that provides consultation to prisons and jails.

"I’ve been through some pretty bad situations and some riots and hostage situations," Maynard said. "I’ve always been drawn toward challenges. That’s what drew me down here. I think this is going to be a big challenge."

Eh.. probably not really, though. Sounds more like a dude who has already paid his "challenge" dues and is looking for one more gig from which to draw a pension before he retires all the way.  But who knows? When I'm 73 I'm sure I'll take up base jumping or something.

For Gusman's part, well, as ever it is all about budget leverage. 

Gusman said Thursday that Maynard also will serve as a "conduit to gain access to financial and operational resources that the Sheriff's Office has been denied for years."

Maynard's responsibilities will include crafting a jail budget that Gusman has said must include pay raises for his deputies, long a key point of dispute between the Sheriff's Office and the Landrieu administration in their fight over jail funding.

"Through our collective work," Gusman said, "we will achieve clarity on the budget needed to operate the Orleans Justice Center and meet the other items outlined in the consent decree."

Anyway so welcome Substitute Sheriff Money Conduit, I guess.  Good luck.

The bail is too damn high

Due the the deplorable conditions at Orleans Parish Prison, a federal judge recently ordered Sheriff Gusman surrender his administrative duties to a "compliance director"  charged with meeting the terms of a consent decree.

The deal allows the sheriff to hire the compliance director, who will have "final authority" over the jail. But the sheriff must hire the director from among three candidates selected by the the Justice Department, inmates represented by the MacArthur Justice Center and Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration. The judge has final approval of the hire.

The full-time director, who will be based in New Orleans, will stay in place until Africk decides the jail has substantially implemented changes ordered by a federal consent decree to improve conditions in the facility, according to the agreement -- a task the judge says should be substantially completed within a year.

Last week, Gusman named a panel of luminaries who we suppose will assist him in selecting his own replacement. There's a lot of people on this panel and we're not really how they're going to help, exactly. But here they are.

This week, we find the Vera Institute's latest report on the New Orleans jail population.  A summary and some quick facts can be found here. Among those findings, we see that 90 percent of the population on the  comprised of people waiting to be adjudicated.  This is about what you would expect given the jail's primary purpose. But, remember, this is a facility struggling to meet constitutional standards due, in part, to overcrowding problems. But do they all have to be there?

Out of the 451 people in jail who were assessed for risk and given a risk score, 216—or 48 percent—were found to present a low or low-moderate risk. Those 216 people represented 14 percent of the entire jail population.

These low and low-moderate risk arrestees were held in jail because a judge decided they had to pay a financial bond to get out. One-hundred and eighteen of them were held on a $25,000 bail or less, an unaffordable sum to many: New Orleans’s poverty rate is almost twice the national average. Eighty-five percent of people who go through the criminal justice system are too poor to hire a lawyer.

In other words, nearly half the population at OPP during the time period for which the study was conducted were there only because the bail was too damn high. Tough news for them, of course. But maybe not so bad for prosecutors looking to leverage more favorable pleas from minor offenders. It's worth noting that the DA is on Gusman's selection panel. 

Meanwhile, despite the Vera Institute's findings, and despite the express policy set by the City Council for limiting unnecessary incarceration, there is a competing vision for complying with the judge's order. Build more and bigger jails. 

The June 28 guest column penned by David Kerstein, CEO of Helis Oil and Gas and chairperson of the Business Council of New Orleans and the River Region, outlined a plan for the “development and maintenance of additional jail facilities” for the city of New Orleans. The plan calls for a major increase in the city’s capacity to jail its residents. The Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition vehemently challenges the need for and desirability of this plan.

Further, we are deeply concerned by Kerstein’s assertion that the plan is the result of ongoing meetings with the city administration, the Sheriff’s Office and other unnamed stakeholders. Hasn’t the mayor stated clearly, in word and action, the city’s commitment to a small jail, to greater use of alternatives to incarceration, and to the development of more effective programs of social benefit that will translate into fewer crimes and arrests?

Always money in building more jail, I guess. And there are more and quicker convictions produced from holding people indefinitely. That is, as long as you keep that jail full of people who can't afford the unreasonable bail. Everybody wins, right?

What will Gusman do all day?

He says this means he gets to delegate things now. Seems dubious.

At a news conference Tuesday, Gusman insisted that he would remain at the helm, even as he welcomed the addition of a compliance director who will be tasked with implementing a series of jail reforms known as a federal consent decree.

“This is not unlike delegating authority that I do for a lot of the people I work with,” the sheriff said. He added that the compliance budget “must address” deputy pay raises, a flash point in the long-running dispute between City Hall and the Sheriff’s Office.

“This is about us having a direct pipeline to the court. This gives us an opportunity to cut through the challenges, the obstructions, the gamesmanship that’s been going on.”

The settlement makes clear, however, that the compliance director “will be answerable only to the court.”

“The compliance director shall seek advice and/or approval from the sheriff regarding all decisions that materially impact compliance with the consent (decree) unless doing so would cause unreasonable delay, and otherwise regularly inform the sheriff regarding jail operations,” the document says.

The punchline comes next week sometime when we find out the new Compliance Director is actually Ed Blakely. 

Still the sheriff

It looks like Marlin Gusman isn't going to have to give up his jail after all.

Sheriff Marlin Gusman has struck a deal that apparently will stave off a federal takeover of the Orleans Justice Center, finding common ground with the U.S. Justice Department and inmates who filed a class-action lawsuit over conditions at the city’s jail.

Terms of the compromise were not immediately made public, but the details are expected to be revealed in federal court Tuesday morning, according to sources familiar with the matter.

We've said it before but Gusman is a savvy and stubborn guy and not an easy politician to tangle with. Not for the mayor, not for his rivals, not for the US Justice Department. In other words he is one seriously resilient dude. Quite Nolier of him.