Here's a shocker: "Shock Probation" doesn't work.

This would be like me telling my daughter, "You broke the glass so you don't get a cookie - nah, here's the cookie anyway. But don't do it again."

Might just be the stupidest law enforcement policy I've ever heard of - especially when applied to violent offenders.

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071223/NEWS01/712230489

KY "Shock Probationers" Often Commit New Felonies

When Demetrius Bradley came before a Louisville judge last December, he had served just five months of an eight-year sentence for felony drug possession, assault, and wanton endangerment -- with two other felony cases pending. Still, a judge deemed him a good candidate for "shock" probation, which allows inmates to be released after serving one-to-six month terms. Less than seven months later, Bradley was back in court -- this time charged with fatally shooting a man and wounding a woman in a home robbery, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports. "It shows that the justice system, to me, is totally messed up," said the murdered man's mother.

Shock probation, started with nonviolent officers, now includes repeat and violent offenders who were never intended to be part of the program, officials acknowledge. A Courier-Journal analysis of 260 shock probations granted in Louisville's Jefferson County last year shows that 120 have been arrested or charged again in crimes ranging from murder, rape and armed robbery to drug use and driving drunk. More than 60 percent of new arrests were for felony charges. "Good gosh, that's a huge figure," said Harry Rothgerber, first assistant with the Jefferson prosecutor's office. "It says that shock probation is being used inappropriately." Judges agree the numbers are high, but they say Kentucky's crowded jails and prisons force them to look for sentencing alternatives.

And now commence posting of cheerleader: 3, 2, 1 ...

 

Judges say the jails' overcrowding forces them to look for alternatives to incarceration. Sounds like the population outside the jail is overcrowded as well, forcing the judges to find ways of eliminating some of the excess population.

Fuck the judges. They should die.

 

Is this the first time someone has started a thread with "Here's a shocker" in the title and then began with an example about his daughter?

 

OK, I'm no longer convinced 'Yab is scumbag he pretends to be.

I think he fancies himself Jonathan Swift, and his modest proposal has simply taken 8,700 posts to manifest itself.

You're one clever son of a bitch, 'Yab.

 

Well, instead of ranting about judges and policies like "shock probation", maybe they should address the real issue: overcrowding in jails because of absolutely asinine laws relating to drug offenses.

 

That may be true of federal prisons, but generally, state run prisons are not overcrowded due to excessive amounts of prisoners doing large time for small drug charges.

 

No, but the article specifically states that it's used (quite often stupidly) as a means of addressing overcrowding issues and saving the state money and that approximately 1/3 of the time it's used of drug-related offenses.

The newspaper found that more than one-third of the crimes in which people were given shock release last year were drug-related.

"The No. 1 problem we have is drugs, and we are not going to incarcerate ourselves out of that problem," said Chief Jefferson Circuit Judge James Shake. "These people are going to get out at some point anyway. The question is, do you let them out and try to hold something (probation) over them?"

 

I'm curious what makes Chief Jefferson Circuit Judge James Shake a sociology expert, a drug dependency expert, or an education expert? He's a judge, which means he was a politically connected lawyer, nothing more or less. Enforce the law and leave the sermons for Sundays and the rehalbilitation to experts.

Besides, what the fuck are you holding over their heads? The threat of jail that you have just demonstrated you lack the courage to enforce?

 

Maybe he has more than one iota of common sense. Good luck treating addiction with jail time. We can either address root causes or we can keep pounding our head on the walls and crying about how bad our headache is.

This shock probation thing is pretty retarded with out some clear definitions on who is applicable for it and no tie ins to recovery/rehab organizations. It is equally stupid to continue with something that is incredibly expensive and ineffective.

 

I suppose it's completely outside the realm of possibility that he, ya know, did some research on these things. Nah. He's probably too busy, what's the phrase, legislating from the bench?

And I didn't realize you needed a sociology degree to understand that the country has a drug problem, one that manifests itself in perhaps direct proportion to income levels, and that Kentucky probably isn't going to be in the upper echelons of these United States when it comes to per capita income.

And you say "enforce the law." Shock probation is "the law." Don't like it? That's a job for the legislature. That goes back to that separation of powers thing righties like to accuse judges of overstepping, and that they ignore from a certain member of a different governmental branch.