Weak spots in the criminal justice system

Here I am, looking at a list of ten felony charges against the parents of the kids we are raising, spread over four different cases. And that's only counting the ones filed with the district attorney. There are other open cases with several local justice courts. How do things get crazy like this?

We place a lot of trust in our courts that they will be able to effectively dispense justice. Normally everything works well. For the most part, the guilty are punished according to the legal guidelines, and the innocent are protected. The right to a speedy trial is met.

The troublesome part is when the assumptions made by the legal system are not met. For instance, there's an assumption that people place a high value on having a valid driver's license. For some people, the thought of losing their license is incentive enough to stay away from situations where they may lose that license. Unfortunately, there are others who don't really care. They'll drive whether they have a license or not. Who cares if the car is insured? Certainly not the one who drives without a license.

How about having a stable physical address? Most people have an apartment or home. The probation and warrant systems become very ineffective if someone happens to be homeless, or bounces from hotel to hotel at night.

Phone numbers are the same way. I've had the same phone number for over ten years, and that includes moving once. In our case with the parents of the children we are raising, I've seen about a dozen phone numbers over just one year while trying to keep a path of communication open. The phones always seem to get broken, stolen, lost, turned off for lack of payment, or the number gets to be known by the wrong people and abandoned.

Then there are court-imposed fines and fees. To someone living on the fringe with no home, no job, an occasional phone, and the lifestyle that goes with those limitations, fines and fees just don't mean anything. Sure, they're waiting, building up, and may get sent to collections or turn back into warrants in the future, but it's hard to remember them, let alone care about them. The only real attention-getter is actual jail time, and non-violent offenders are regularly released due to overcrowding. That means the best wake-up call available can't be used most of the time for those who fit the profile I've described.

In most cases, the system is designed around the idea that people are generally under control and occasionally make mistakes. Most people are easy to get in touch with. Most people have jobs, places to live, and a telephone. When none of those apply, it's easy to see holes in the system that cause amazing delays, and court cases can stall for months at a time. If the wayward soul continues to rack up new cases while the old ones are delayed, it can turn into a nightmare just to track them all, let alone attend and resolve things.

Now, life can be pretty unpleasant for those who are hard to track. It's not the kind of lifestyle that most would choose. It's almost always the last remaining choice when nothing else works.

Most of the time, things seem to get back in sync fairly well when the person who has been flying under the radar is arrested. Some jurisdictions are able to pick up on that and get their court dates and prosecutions back on track. Unfortunately, not all of them are tied in to each other that well, and they may not even know the person they want is already in someone else's jail.

I'm sure things are leaps and bounds better than they used to be due to increased use of technology. Online databases of court dates, jail rosters, and all those things are a powerful resource. It's just discouraging that things could be so much more uniform and fair if it were not for budget constraints and variability in rules and procedures from one jurisdiction to another.

My biggest advice would be to work to get issues resolved while everyone involved is still stable enough to be employed, and can keep both the rent and phone bill paid. If things are already worse than that, the best you can do is to make sure the various jurisdictions know when an arrest happens so they can get cases all back on track. The right to a speedy trial should apply to more than just the accused. No matter the resolution of those cases, having them closed will be a benefit to everyone involved, particularly the innocent children.