Is Paris paying the price of fame?
By Angela Hawken
Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo claims to be outraged that Paris Hilton was initially sent home after serving only a few days of her 45-day sentence for violating probation. He promises to have his criminal branch investigate whether “the law is being applied equally and justly in this case.” Delgadillo huffs, “We cannot tolerate a two-tiered jail system where the rich and powerful receive special treatment.”
The city attorney must know better. Nominal jail terms are not the exclusive domain of the privileged. What’s shocking here is that Paris Hilton did not get special treatment. Offenders sent to jail in Los Angeles County routinely serve only about 10 percent of their nominal sentences. Hilton was originally sentenced to 45 days in jail. That’s actually more time served than is typical for a probation violation. Her sentence was automatically cut in half because every day served without breaking jail rules counts as two days. Entering jail before midnight on a Sunday, she was released early the following Thursday morning. That Hilton served five days on her 45-day sentence is entirely consistent with how L.A. County manages its jail-inmate population. That she was released early from custody was par for the course; the order she was given to appear in court, and the subsequent ruling that she return to jail, was harsher treatment than would be typical.
The citizens of Los Angeles should indeed be angry, but not (in this case) about special treatment for the rich and famous. We should be angry that the criminal justice system in this county is running mostly on bluff, routinely promising more punishment than it can deliver. Both the county jail and the state prison system have to confront hard choices: either building even more capacity to lock even more people away, or taking a hard look at who really belongs behind bars and how to punish people without paying for their room and board.
But why did the Hilton case motive judges and prosecutors to call foul play, when many thousands of inmates are discharged from L.A. jails, serving an equally small portion of their sentence? Early release from jail began en-masse in mid-2002, when budget cuts prompted Sheriff Lee Baca to close a number of L.A. jails. Given current overcrowding, for every new person who enters our jail system, one must leave. And this process of displacement often releases offenders who are guilty of more than violating the terms of their probation and narcissism. According to an L.A. Times article from last year, 150,000 county jail inmates have received an early release in the past four years. For these offenders, there was a 20 percent re-arrest rate within 90 days of release. A quarter of those arrests were for violent or life-endangering crimes (including 1,443 assaults and 16 homicides). As many crimes do not result in an arrest, the actual crime numbers attributable to this group must be much greater.
Los Angeles jails are grim. Particularly for the pampered, even a few days in jail will not be forgotten in a hurry. Probation terms must be enforced and Hilton needed to be held accountable for her actions. But come on. To all those who screamed foul play, of the many violence-prone individuals given early release from county jails each day, is Paris Hilton the kind of offender whose early release would cause us to lose sleep? Let’s save our energy for reforming sentencing policy and dealing with jail over-crowding for those who do.
Angela Hawken is a professor of economics and policy analysis at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy.