Information is power, if you can figure out what it means
There was a time when information was power and those who had access to the information had that power. Today, information is all over the place. You log onto Google and the world is there at your fingertips. Getting the information is no problem. The trick now is to figure out what it all means. There are many people out there only too willing to help you figure it out. Tune in the TV to any talk show and listen to the talking heads, really the shouting heads, and they’ll explain what it all means. If you want one version, just tune in to Fox. If that’s not your cup of tea, tune in to CNN for another view.
The truth is, most people in the print media, meaning primarily newspaper people, foolishly believed that that’s just TV talking and that print journalists are different. After all, TV people are show biz. They worry about their hair and doing a complex political story in 90 seconds with perhaps another 15 seconds for the opposing view. We’re print. We’re thoughtful, analytical, balanced, careful and, something we never would call ourselves but still really believe, we are principled. Well, I’m here to report that we may have been delusional.
A sad case in point: This Sunday, the Los Angeles Times ran a front page story, above the fold (which means the top half of the page, considered to be prime journalistic real estate), about the Los Angeles County early release program. The gravamen of the story and the charge made is that the Sheriff’s Department was cutting loose a bunch of dangerous misdemeanants before they served any significant portion of their sentences, and that these people were reigning havoc on the community. The L.A. Times headline was flagrant, and read like TV sound bites. For example: “Releasing Inmates Early Has a Costly Human Toll,” and the subhead, “A shortage of jail beds puts career criminals back on the streets, where they often commit new offenses.” And then the paper published a chart on the front page entitled, “Free to re-offend,” just in case you were slow and couldn’t quite figure out the slant to the story. To do them justice, I’ve reprinted the entire chart from the front page.
Free to re-offend
From July 2002 to December 2005,
the number of inmates who should
have been in jail were:
Released early 148,229
Rearrested: 15,775
Charged with assault: 1,443
Charged with a sex offense: 518
Charged with murder: 16
Sources: L.A. County Sheriff’s Department;
L.A. Superior Court
Take a look at it, read the numbers and do the arithmetic. I did and then I rewrote the L.A. Times story, except I gave it the opposite spin.
Early Release Program a Major Success
Ninety percent of those released are not rearrested within three and a half years.
In the three and one half year period, from July 2002 to December 2005, according to L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and L.A. Superior Court statistics, almost 90 percent of the people jailed but released before their complete sentences were served were not rearrested.
Dr. Allsmart (a fictional penology expert) said the low rate of rearrests of about 10 percent of those released early over a three and one half year period proves that more sensitive and human treatment of offenders leads to a much better rehabilitation result. The low rate of rearrests of the early released prisoners shows that the societal cost of imprisoning these misdemeanants is substantially reduced, and it requires less law enforcement and correctional resources, which can be better applied in other areas of law enforcement; efforts can be targeted, instead, on career criminals. Furthermore, Allsmart added, when viewing the breakdown of the offenses listed in the chart, it shows that of the 148,229 offenders released early in that period, only 2,182 committed the serious offenses of assault, robbery, sex offenses and murder, which is less then 1.7 percent.
Now, the truth is, I don’t know whether the early release program, which is pretty much necessitated by lack of space and funding, is good or bad policy, or if the data is sufficiently clear that you could draw any realistic conclusions. I do know that if you were one of the 16 people murdered it was a pretty bad decision to release those inmates early. The problem is, we don’t have the ability to predict behavior. Are 16 murders committed by a population of 148,229 early released inmates high, low or about average? I certainly couldn’t tell reading the L.A. Times article. What is a successful program? What do we have to achieve to be called successful? Should it be 98 percent, 99 percent or 100 percent without a rearrest? The problem is that we have no standards. I would hope that we all could still retain, or at least try to retain, some degree of objectivity and balance. I hate to think that the print media is turning into TV.
In this regard, the L.A. Times is not unique. I’ve seen the same tendency in other papers. I’ve seen it in The Malibu Times. It’s tough to try and stay objective and balanced when everyone around you is spinning the story, or when the people who make the most noise seem to get the highest ratings. It may be tough, but that’s our job. And when we don’t do our job, call us on it. Send us those Letters to the Editor, make a little noise and perhaps we’ll try harder.