This isn’t by chance — a new study out this year suggests that this isn’t random: the more we increase police presence, the more we increase arrests for low-level crime.
That court docket full of misdemeanors equates to about 13 million people.
Yet they do incredible harm to people’s lives. An arrest, sometimes in front of one’s own children or the whole neighborhood, is a humiliating, traumatizing, and potentially lethal process. What happens after arrest is equally dangerous: entry into the horrors of the jail system, where disease and violence remain rampant, safety and medical care scarce, and access to loved ones and support systems next-to-non-existent.
Small time cases can linger for months, if not years, subjecting people to the continual disruption of court requirements: missing work, missing school, missing medical appointments, struggling to find child care, spending all day in a formal courtroom where one is not allowed to speak, read, or even look at a phone. Layoffs and firings often follow.
There is a simple question that we as citizens do not ask enough: Why?
Why do we do this to people? Why do we believe that criminal court is the best way to address minor harm? Again and again, research into the subject of what causes crime has demonstrated that pre-trial jailing causes more crime than it prevents.
The jailing we think keeps us safe, in fact has no deterrent effect but actually causes more crime. Suggestions to increase police are, in fact, more likely to spur this cycle of low-level arrests and jailing.