America doesn’t know what to think about, or do about, misdemeanors. Often called Mr. Meaners by baffled inmates, these are offenses punishable by incarceration of one year or less.
Benighted right-wing jurisdictions regard misdemeanors as gateway crimes to murder. They require maximum punishment, with as many felony add-ons—lying to a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest, fleeing and eluding—as will bump the misdemeanor up to felony and the inmate’s incarceration from county jail misery to state prison horror.
The Left, by contrast, regard such offenses as social illnesses—like a touch of the grippe or a troublesome catarrh. A spoon full of criminal justice sugar will make the medicine go down in the most delightful way!
The first extreme was my city, Jacksonville, FL. Under the previous sheriff and a bloody-fanged state attorney, all misdemeanants were arrested. No Notices to Appear (sometimes called desk tickets) were issued, and no warnings given. The only response was booking, jail, bail, trial then jail, then prison. This resulted in incarceration for threats to civilization such as riding a bicycle at night without a light, jaywalking, and driving with license suspended because of an expired tag.
Jacksonville jails were stuffed. Yet with inmates stacked on bunk beds and sleeping on the floors, the murder rate remained horrifying, among the highest per capita in the nation. This confirms my observation that “broken windows” policing works well against window breakers but not against life takers. (In my neighborhood, bad guys don’t break windows; they break skulls.)
At the other extreme are California and New York. Small misdemeanors are simply ignored. Those committing more serious misdemeanors are considered not perpetrators requiring punishment but victims in need of understanding.
Robbers and burglars are gently admonished, sex offenders counseled, and intimate partner batterers given a much-needed talking to. In such matters, pre-trial detention is considered barbarous. Instead, miscreants are issued a computer-generated ticket that specifies a date certain on which a wise judge will append signature and seal to all presents pertinent and declare, “Let the healing begin!”
The merchants of Rodeo Drive and Fifth Avenue, of course, are not amused. When naughty boys and girls snap-chat themselves into a mob armed with hammers and axes, they can smash and grab a million bucks in jewels, furs and handbags in 90 seconds flat. Frankly I’m surprised the jewelers and fashionistas haven’t installed, behind the credit card machines, twin .50 calibers in barbettes camouflaged with Swarovski crystals.
For first-time and small-time misdemeanants, cranking up the machinery of cops, courts, jail and bail is excessive. Letting them go with a piece of paper, however, is worse. Once on the loose, defendants don’t show up for court, violate bail and probation, have warrants issued, and then get busted with felony upgrades. The truly foolish, when next they encounter police, panic, draw from the drop, and catch expanding cop bullets in their chests and heads.
Effective adjudication of first-time and small-time misdemeanors should have two objectives. First, to stop the behaviors cold. Second, to make a huge impression on the offender. On average, 40 percent of detainees will take a clue and stop doing what they were doing. Given the obduracy of human nature, that’s a good number.
It’s necessary to understand petty crooks. They’re disorganized. They don’t “calendar,” and they don’t make lists. Police citations, official forms, and papers other than lottery tickets flutter off them like dandruff. Watches? Appointments? They don’t wear the former and can’t spell the latter. Sober calculation of self-interest? On average, 90–98 percent of arrestees have multiple scheduled narcotics swirling in their blood and brains. Prudence and forethought, if extant, are long extinguished.
To create the legal equivalent of shock and awe without booking and jail, it is necessary to utilize government’s astonishing ability to inconvenience, impoverish and annoy. This has to happen at once. It is equivalent to immediately applying the rolled newspaper to the poopy puppy’s bottom.
State action should use existing laws and procedures, re-ordered and re-purposed of course, but not requiring legislation, rule-making and retraining. Currently there are too many hug-a-thug elected officials who enjoy virtuous posturing in public, and in private, delight in the pain criminals inflict on the Great Unwashed who—too bad, so sad—work in places other than universities, governments, non-profits, and media.
Hence Mr. Meaner’s suggestions for first-time and small-time f#ck-ups:
1. Detain rather than arrest. Cops can detain suspects, in handcuffs, without arresting and booking them. They do this routinely during traffic stops.
2. Tow the vehicle. Nothing gets attention like your ride towed to dusty yards behind chain-link fences guarded by cranky pit bulls. Tow lots won’t release vehicles without a valid registration, which requires that tickets be paid, insurance purchased, and tags updated—first. If the impounded vehicles were borrowed from mommas, sweeties, homies and carnales, their curses and screams become part of the punishment.
3. Twenty-four-hour court. Round-the-clock court sessions were common at the turn of the twentieth century. These “sunrise courts” adjudicated cases immediately so minor legal problems got handled, and defendants were able to get to work the next day. Small towns still adjudicate petty offenses in a similar way with 24-hour, on-call magistrates. If, after review, detainees have outstanding warrants and detainers, or are incorrigible recidivists, the magistrate can always change detention to arrest and remand the mopes to jail.
Will urban judges sit for night courts? Grudgingly, yes. County judges do not come from white-shoe law firms with on-call limos and jets, private dining rooms, and ex-beauty queens answering the phones. They hale from hard-scrabble street law where too many attorneys chase too few clients and even fewer dollars. To resign a comfy judgeship with lavish pensions and insurance merely to avoid a tour on the night shift is inconceivable.
Twenty-four-hour courts will require special accommodations. An emergency medical technician needs to be on duty to administer oxygen, methadone, Narcan, insulin, amiodarone, epinephrine, neuroleptics, anti-nausea, and anti-seizure drugs. Why? Because when detained in rooms for interminable hours, defendants fall out, freak out, conk out, convulse, hallucinate, or have the occasional baby.
A cell with a floor drain will be important in a court that is a combination of bus station, emergency room, and drunk tank. (Addicts coming off the innumerable derivatives of morphine also toss their cookies.) A snack stand should sell sandwiches, candy and cigarettes. Depriving defendants of sugar, caffeine, nicotine and fatty food at three o’clock in the morning is cruel and unusual.
Cell phone chargers, stoutly secured against theft, will be necessary for defendants to charge their perpetually dead batteries and call out for money and sympathy. A clerk/cashier will be needed to take payments for fines and citations and to update court databases at once. All who pass through the tedium of 24-hour court deserve to hit the streets with clean records and receipts to prove it. A county shuttle will stay busy taking the fortunate to the tow yard and the unfortunate to jail.
Government can administer unforgettable misery, aggravation and expense to first-time misdemeanants without arresting and jailing them. Waiting for hours while bored clerks shuffle forms and annoyed judges drag through the docket will suggest, to the literary minded, the outer ring of Dante’s Inferno. Nonetheless, this annoyance spares some misdemeanants arrest records that can be discovered on-line by employers and partners and that amount to a life sentence even if charges are dropped. Worse, in three-strikes states like mine, a first misdemeanor conviction can become strike one.
The smart offenders will make it to work the next day albeit bedraggled, sleep-deprived, and lighter in the wallet. The dumb ones who reoffend at least will have had one good chance to straighten up and fly right.