 |
“When you take away a purpose, you don’t have a job, or you aren’t going to work, you’re sitting around — that’s what I call ‘idle hands, idle minds.’ Bad things happen,” said Sheriff Mark Dannels of Cochise County, Arizona.
In Dannel's Mexican border-adjacent rural county of 131,000 residents, his worry is that the longer some are unemployed and without money to pay rent or buy groceries, they could begin to throw away the rulebook.
“Good people become desperate ... They don’t have a job and their need and survival instinct kicks in — run into a store and steal food, run in and rob a place,” Dannels said. “That is scary, you bet it. Along with the more anxiety increase, fear becomes the result, aggravation. All that tips the scale for law-abiding citizens.”
Dannels is also concerned about the number of convicted criminals and pretrial population that are either being released from county jails and state prisons or not held before trial due to avoid facility overcrowding during the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr. James Alan Fox, Lipman Family professor of criminology, law, and public policy at Northeastern University, said people who normally would be held in county jail for more serious crimes until going to trial are being released due to the health concern of being held in closed quarters. However, in light of these circumstances, they will not have their initial appearance in court until June, pushing the judicial process and potential incarceration down the road six weeks. In Cochise County, the number of people in jail is down 32% as of late last week.
“Given the fact that they have as a group — they’re more likely to commit crime than those not incarcerated, having them in the general population could have an impact on increased crime,” said Fox while adding that the danger in releasing inmates is being minimized by releasing predominantly nonviolent offenders.
“With personal finances being a major concern to many Loudoun County residents, Sheriff Chapman also sees a potential rise in theft and other property-related crimes,” Kraig Troxell, spokesman for the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, wrote in an email. “It is possible the economic impact, as well as the rise in crime law enforcement experiences during more seasonal weather (summer), could lead to an increase in crime in our community.”
The effect of not holding new arrestees is that people who would be physically blocked from carrying out another crime are not behind bars awaiting trial or serving time, according to Dannels. A person arrested for driving under the influence would not be brought to jail, while another person who commits criminal trespassing would only get a ticket.
And he is concerned about people who “are just getting restless.” In the first week of April, the Cochise County sheriff’s department reported a drive-by stabbing, as well as 20 car burglaries, the latter of which were carried out by teenage suspects.
“There’s no consequences. Let me go do it again because they know we’re not trying to put people in jail right now,” Dannels said.
Just outside the Washington metropolitan area, the sheriff’s department of Loudoun County, Virginia, told the Washington Examiner it saw a decrease in both serious and property-related crimes when comparing March to the same month last year. But the lockdown and its economic effects have grown substantially since then.
Others do not believe crime will spike in the coming weeks, even as millions remain out of work at home and jails continue inmate releases.
But Megan Quattlebaum, a spokeswoman for the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a group that helps federal, state, and local government agencies shape criminal justice policy, said that in recent conversations with law enforcement across the country, officials said, “The people they’re arresting are not the people they released.”
Quattlebaum pointed to the effects of the 2008 recession and said crime levels did not spike then despite greater need among millions of people who were worse off financially. In addition, Quattlebaum said police have boosted their visibility, which serves as a deterrent.
Fox and Quattlebaum agreed stay-at-home orders help law enforcement by cutting down the number of people going outside. Crimes of opportunity, like the random mugging of a person walking down the street, are less likely to occur because fewer people are in public.
“I do expect — and there’s some indication of it — that street crime, robberies, crimes involving strangers, will be impacted or are impacted when fewer people are out and about interacting with strangers,” said Fox, who served on former President Bill Clinton’s advisory committee on school shootings. “It’s hard to rob somebody when they’re behind closed doors. And as far as burglary, because people are home, a potential burglar is less likely to target a location.
“I also don’t expect that most people will turn to crime because they need bread or toilet paper. I can’t say it won’t happen, but most will not do that. They’ll try to find other ways, noncriminal ways to get what they need either by asking neighbors or trying to get the government to help,” said Fox. “I don’t see anarchy out there where people are robbing others.”
Source:Washingtonexaminer
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Your Views are needed.Thanks!