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Kern DA measures success by the number sent to prison
| Saturday, Oct 11 2008 1:31 PM
Last Updated: Saturday, Oct 11 2008 1:30 PM
Kern County District Attorney Ed Jagels doesn’t measure success by comparing his record of convictions against his record of acquittals.
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The number of Kern County residents sent to state prison each year, he says, is the statistic that really counts.
“We tend to measure our performance by the per capita prison commitment rate,” Jagels said. “We’ve always been at the top until the last three years.”
Indeed, over the past two decades, the long-serving DA and his prosecutors have sent a larger proportion of Kern’s population to state prison than any other county in California.
Between 2000 and 2004, Kern imprisoned about 31 people per 10,000 Kern County residents. Last year, that statistic dipped to 27.5 per 10,000.
$103M A YEAR
Despite the drop, a total of 2,250 defendants from Kern County were sent to state prisons last year at an estimated annual cost to taxpayers of $46,000 per inmate, or $103.5 million per year.
Of course, that $103 million doesn’t include the more than 11,000 local defendants sentenced to state prison during the previous five years. It also doesn’t include the cost for those sentenced to county jail.
Many have questioned the premise that sending more people to prison is a sign of success, or that saddling more individuals with the scarlet letter felons carry around for a lifetime is a measure of social good.
“I certainly hope we’re not measuring success by the number of individuals we ship off to the gulag,” said Kern County Public Defender Mark Arnold.
Arnold said the explosion in California’s prison population, which has grown from 40,000 in 1983 to more than 171,000 as of May 2008, is choking the state budget.
Arnold said it’s time to take a closer look at who we’re sending to prison and whether a $46,000 per year prison cell is the right place for certain types of offenders, including many drug offenders.
He also noted that “draconian” sentencing laws have dramatically lengthened prison terms for many felons.
“It’s an enormous price tag,” Arnold said of the ballooning prison population.
FRESNO MEASURES DIFFERENTLY
John Savrnoch, the chief assistant district attorney for Fresno County, said his office does look at the per capita prison commitment rates as a possible indicator, but not as the barometer of success.
The number of felonies filed that result in a felony conviction is the basic number he looks at to gauge performance.
“Our focus is, ‘Are we filing legitimate cases?’” he said.
But Savrnoch also argued that it’s not a DA’s job to consider the cost of imprisonment.
“We seek to maximize punishment for serious criminals,” Savrnoch said of the approach taken by the Fresno office.
And so does Ed Jagels, he said.
“He hasn’t been in office since Henry Ford developed the Model T because voters think he has a nice smile,” Savrnoch said. “The people of Kern County want a hardass as a DA.”
WHY THE SLIDE?
For Jagels, who has long touted the prison commitment rate as a reflection of his tough-on-crime approach to criminal prosecution, falling into third place behind San Bernardino and Fresno counties does not sit well with him.
Nevertheless, Jagels said he thinks he knows what may have caused the slide:
- “Judges are pleading cases out from under us,” he said, possibly resulting in a smaller proportion of defendants being sentenced to prison.
- After years of sending lawbreakers to prison, “you’re probably shrinking your roll of felons,” he said.
- Before voters passed Proposition 36, the treatment program for drug offenders, “we probably sent a higher percentage of felons to prison on narcotics offenses than other places,” Jagels said.
By comparison, only 8.3 percent of prisoners statewide were serving sentences for simple possession.