THE FACTS ABOUT CROWDED JAILS AND ROLE OF JUDGES

My dad used to say that when he was growing up in Des Arc, everybody knew the news. They only read the paper to see if it was printed right. That's the way I feel when the Missourian writes about the criminal justice system.

On Jan. 31 this paper ran an editorial (following several stories) about crowding in the Cape Girardeau County Jail. Your opinions are based on some truths and some truisms. It was recently my job to decide who could bond out of jail and who served a sentence and for how long. I think you readers deserve some more accurate information.

The Cape Girardeau County Jail is built to hold 58 men and four women. The jail was designed before crack cocaine assaulted our county, before drunk drivers were viewed as killers, before tough new adult abuse laws put more women-beaters behind bars and before West Park Mall became a magnet for shoplifters from all over Southeast Missouri and Southern Illinois. The jail was built when crime was still gender biased. Today more and more women commit crimes that land them in our jail.

Life has changed here in the last 20 years. Still, it is the county's legal duty to maintain an adequate jail for our safety no matter what strains changing times put on the criminal justice budget.

When the jail is too full we do not "share space with other counties," as you say. We pay to board our prisoners out in other jails. Then the jailer worries about his budget because the sheriff will worry about his budget because the county commission will raise hell about its budget, and they can make a sheriff's life miserable and so on down the line. So quite often the judge gets a call: "Can't you let some of these prisoner's out?" Contrary to your editorial, nobody out there can tell a judge to shorten or delay a sentence.

The public, on the other hand, wants all the bad guys behind bars. The public believes that all we need to stop crime is tough judges, tough legislators and tough laws. Why? Because that's what judges and legislators tell the people when they run for office, and it works. No politician wants to tell the people that getting tough involves more tax dollars, and the news media certainly don't present the whole story.

Some bold politician or another is always ready to make the criminals pay for their jail and medical bills. That has been the law in Missouri since 1825. Besides, criminals usually have as much money as turnips have blood. Think about it. If criminals had enough on the ball to make money, why would they be criminals?

You say that 80 percent of the prisoners are in jail awaiting court appearances, and they can't make bail. Why are they waiting so long? If they don't have money for a bond, then they don't have money for a lawyer either. They must rely on the public defender system for a lawyer.

This past December one assistant public defender quit, one became a prosecutor, one became a judge, and there weren't enough to start with. That meant that defendants in jail had to wait another month for their turn to use the public defender.

Understandably, John Q. Public doesn't want to spend his money on free lawyers for criminals, but the federal courts say that defendants either get lawyers or go free. The General Assembly scrimps on the public defender budget (it's a lot more fun to buy football stadiums), but the fewer public defenders you hire the longer it takes to get cases through the system. The less you pay public defenders the faster they quit. So your jail fills up.

Cape Girardeau County would need a 700-bed jail if judges didn't let defendants out on bail before trial (besides, it's the law). The public should know that just because a defendant can pay a bondsman $250 for a $2,500 bond, he isn't any less likely to run off or commit crimes than his brother, with the same background, charged with the same crime, who just doesn't have the money. All the bond provides is a motivated bondsman to round up defendants who fail to appear.

Sometimes, especially when the jail is crowded, judges let defendants out on their personal recognizance, which is their signed promise to appear in court. But what does the Missourian have to say about that?

When I allowed Steven D. Dickson to bond out on his signature, he had no prior history of violence or failure to appear in court. Then Dickson was charged with murder while he was out on bond. It was every judge's nightmare. Dickson and I became front-page news. That's no motivation for any judge to shorten a sentence or allow anyone out on bond, but what were the facts and why was he in jail?

Dickson was jailed when he got caught with some stereo equipment stolen from a home where he was staying. Pretty tame stuff compared to murder. The day the murder case and the stolen property case came to preliminary hearing, the Missourian reporter watched the murder hearing but walked before he could learn the facts on the property charge. Those facts would have explained Dickson's risk level on the recognizance bond. The reporter didn't want to bother his brain with the facts when he had already had his two front-page bylines.

You editorialize for alternatives to incarceration like the electronic shackle, but when Lammoire Taylor is released on the shackle for Michael Davis' death in the hazing case, it's your front-page outrage. The St. Louis City Jail is full too. Surely Taylor deserves to be in jail, but the St. Louis County sheriff had to choose between releasing Taylor on the shackle or being forced to release a murderer, drug dealer or rapist who hadn't made bond. (Remember, it is more fun to build a football stadium than a jail.)

Why don't our local judges use the electronic shackle? The shackle system was so rarely used that the sheriff got rid of it.

The shackle costs defendants $8 a day. That may not sound like much to most of your readers, but remember these prisoners are broke. Whether it's their own fault or not, they are broke. To use the shackle, the prisoner must have a working phone (rare in this group) and $240 per month (more rare). The county commission doesn't want to pay for it -- not at all.

Another problem with the shackle is that from time to time prisoners cut them off and run away. Jeff Seimers did that when I tried the shackle as an alternative. When he eventually surrendered, I let him work in the county park to reduce his jail days, and he ran off again. It cost the county $2,500 to bring him back from Florida.

Few of these dry statistics make the paper, the radio or television. For example, the Department of Corrections has 16,262 beds, and they are all full. When one prisoner goes in, another must come out. If you put too many in, a federal judge will order them let out. So if a judge tries to look tough and impose a long sentence, he ought to consider who he's letting out in exchange for a headline.

The Missouri Department of Corrections is now so overcrowded that felons out on parole can commit new misdemeanors and not have their paroles revoked. They actually have to commit another felony to be revoked and go back to prison. How safe does that make you fell, dear reader?

The people of Cape Girardeau County are intelligent. If we get accurate information, we can make responsible decisions about whether a new jail is a priority. But if the media only publish the sensational news, if you don't follow up on what you report and if your reporters won't listen to the details, the result will be more of the same: a public that expects something for nothing.

Benjamin F. Lewis is a former associate circuit judge who currently practices law in Cape Girardeau.