How California's pay-to-stay jails create a two-tiered justice system.
By Alysia Santo, Victoria Kim
and Anna Flagg
Additional research by Tenny Tatusian and Michael Phillis
A lan Wurtzel met Carole Markin on Match.com in 2010. On their first date, he took her to coffee. After their second date, he walked Markin to her door, followed her inside and, she said, forced her to perform oral sex.
Wurtzel later claimed the act was consensual, but in 2011 he pleaded no contest to sexual battery and was sentenced to a year in jail. His victim was disappointed in the short sentence, but she still believed a measure of justice would be served with her assailant locked behind bars at the Los Angeles County Jail.
Instead, Wurtzel, who also had been convicted of sexual battery in a previous case, found a better option: For $100 a night, he was permitted by the court to avoid county jail entirely. He did his time in the small jail in the nearby city of Seal Beach, with amenities that included flat-screen TVs, a computer room and new beds. He served six months, at a cost of $18,250, according to jail records.
Markin learned about Wurtzel’s upgraded jail stay only recently, from a reporter. “I feel like, ‘Why did I go through this?’” she said.
In what is commonly called “pay-to-stay” or “private jail,” a constellation of small city jails — at least 26 of them in Los Angeles and Orange counties — open their doors to defendants who can afford the option. But what started out as an antidote to overcrowding has evolved into a two-tiered justice system that allows people convicted of serious crimes to buy their way into safer and more comfortable jail stays.
An analysis by The Marshall Project and the Los Angeles Times of the more than 3,500 people who served time in Southern California’s pay-to-stay programs from 2011 through 2015 found more than 160 participants who had been convicted of serious crimes including assault, robbery, domestic violence, battery, sexual assault, sexual abuse of children and possession of child pornography.
Left, inmates crowd a dorm room inside the Los Angeles County Jail in 2014; right, Sgt. Steve Bowles of the Seal Beach Detention Center in Seal Beach, Calif., gives a tour of a jail dorm where pay-to-stay participants can watch television. Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times; Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times
They include a hip-hop choreographer who had sex with an underage girl; a former Los Angeles police officer who stalked and threatened his ex-wife; and a college student who stabbed a man in the abdomen during a street scuffle.
Like Wurtzel, those defendants were convicted of felonies, which can end in a state prison sentence. But judges have the discretion to order some felony offenders to serve time in county jails. In those cases, judges can also allow a defendant to serve the time in a city jail.
Pay-to-stay jail assignments make up only a small fraction of the tens of thousands of inmates sent to detention centers in Southern California each year. But allowing some defendants to avoid the region’s notoriously dangerous county jails has long rankled some in law enforcement who believe it runs counter to the spirit of equal justice.
The region’s pay-to-stay jails took in nearly $7 million from the programs from 2011 through 2015, according to revenue figures provided by the cities. In attracting paying customers, some cities openly tout their facilities as safer, cleaner and with more modern amenities. The Santa Ana jail’s website, for example, notes that jail is a “highly disruptive experience” and promotes its jail as a place where criminals can serve their time in a “less intimidating environment.”
“The whole criminal justice system is becoming more and more about: How much money do you have? Can you afford better attorneys? Can you afford to pay for a nicer place to stay?” said John Eum, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department who investigated the hip-hop choreographer.
Pay to stay is not cheap. From 2011 through 2015, the average cost of a stay — which can last from just one day to more than a year — was $1,756.
The most expensive stay, according to jail records, was $72,050, paid by a man responsible for a drunken freeway crash that killed one of his passengers.
Much more (it's a loong article):
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/03/09/afraid-of-jail-buy-an-upgrade
