'Get Paris out of jail and assign her to clean public toilets'
Tim Dees, the editor-in-chief of Officer.com, argues that Paris Hilton should be let out of jail. The place is overcrowded with mostly violent felons and this is not the best way to use precious resources, the author argues. While the author does not believe in slacking off on penalties for crimes such as those that Hilton was convicted of -- drunk driving and driving on a suspended license, he does believe in maximizing resources to go "where they'll do the most good." So, he says, let her out, and get her on one of those toilet cleaning crews. Dees writes:
UPDATE: The average cost per day for a female inmate in Los Angeles County is $99.64, but it costs about 10 times as much -- $1,109.78 -- to keep Hilton locked up, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore told the celebrity-news Web site TMZ.com. The cost for Hilton include medical treatment and staff associated with her needs.
... Paris Hilton’s jail sentence is a waste of time and resources, no matter how much she might deserve to be there.(snip)
Try to imagine the drama that would ensue if Paris was to get stabbed or beaten while in custody, or if she was to contract an illness caused by mold or staph infection. Then imagine the costs of the ensuing civil actions brought by Paris against the sheriff’s department, who would be happy to correct all of the health and safety problems if they had the money and space to do so.
A county sheriff is generally required to take custody of prisoners sentenced from the courts. How he maintains that custody is usually up to the sheriff, because very few sheriffs have enough jail capacity to hold everyone for the full duration of their sentences. As a result, the sheriff devises reduced sentence strategies based on criminal history, likelihood of flight, capacity for violence, severity of crime, duration of sentence, special costs of incarceration (e.g. special security, health factors), and other criteria. Some inmates are released early with no supervision at all. Others are assigned to electronic monitoring, home confinement, work release, boot camps, honor farms, and other programs that are not so resource-intensive. Some of these have the advantage of allowing the inmate to actually produce something rather than be a drain on public resources.Technology permits these programs to be expanded without the addition of supervising personnel. There are “ankle bracelet” monitoring devices that permit the geographic tracking of offenders and will rat them out if they consume alcohol. The people doing the monitoring can spend most of their time on the people violating their program agreements, instead of finding out who the violators are. Widespread deployment of these devices has been limited by their cost, but the cost can be shifted to the offender when they have the resources to pay for them–say, when the offender is a millionaire heiress.
The bed that Paris Hilton is occupying should be filled by someone who is truly sick and who represents a significant danger to society. Jails can be used to punish, but we can’t afford that when we need all the space in them to incapacitate predators. Get Paris out of jail and assign her to clean public toilets in parks and rail stations. Have her do that for 45 days, confined to her home at night, forbidden to consume alcohol or other recreational drugs, and make her pay for the whole program. If she violates, tack on another week or so of latrine duty. Even better, make her pay for the security personnel to hold back the paparazzi, so that she can commune and become one with her long-handled brush. And when this is all done, remind her that anyone who can afford a chauffeur and who still drives drunk and with a suspended license is both too dumb and irresponsible not to be under supervision.
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