9 minute read
Your Customer is My Customer
By David B. Parker
I believe one thing that the COVID pandemic has forced all aspects of the legal system to do is realize that we can work around predicaments rather than dig our heels in deep. Working together hasn’t violated any oath, once we learned new means to communicate. As a career law enforcement professional, I have known little other than the “us versus them” stereotype, when it came to attorneys and their clients. We arrest and detain, and the attorneys try to get them out. I am not saying we have it 100% correct now at all, but I do believe we have established better communication.
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Learning through necessity, we can work around problems together in order to serve our customers more efficiently and effectively. I must hand it to attorneys that they do seem, in general, to work together even when adversaries. As a law enforcement professional, it seems your side is much better in that aspect. But shouldn’t our common goal be to change or rehabilitate the deviant behavior of those we work with for the good of the community or customer? We have some quality diversion programs locally that have been recognized and modeled nationally. I believe the COVID pandemic accelerated deferred prosecution, leaving diversion as one of the only options in some cases. Yes, we continued to put violent criminals into jails and prisons, but the rate has slowed when compared to the last decade. Confining groups in small, self-contained areas went against everything the government and medical experts advised. Old practices of confinement trended toward increasing exposure, and even death, requiring new protocols to be established and enforced.
Some chose politics over science, but somehow, we still worked together to reduce the rate of detention. Courts heard bail suits across the country, while law enforcement argued bail a necessity to keep the community safe. Judges across the country set or revamped bail schedules, issuing many more P.R./O.R. bonds in the interest of public health. If COVID was out of the equation and using only the data, I believe we outlined a picture for the future regarding bond issues, but the evolution will lie in the middle. We should now be asking questions if we keep the current bail process, or we eliminate the bail process? The pandemic changed all our lives personally and professionally. Focusing on the gains made in this short baseline time frame of COVID, I believe more has been accomplished cooperatively than any other time in my 36-year career. What changed? I believe the most prevalent response is the attention directed towards our customer base and acknowledging where we made measurable advancements.
Whether considering the courts, jails, or prisons, two identifiable customer bases often intermingle. Those customers are the Public and the Detained. A third, less identified and considered cog in the machine, are the individuals working within the system, you and me. The order listed is not relevant, but each is a customer. With regard to the “Public”, the primary function of the law enforcement, including the police, prosecutors, or courts, is to enforce our established laws to protect the public. I hope we all agree that is a fact. This protection is far more in-depth than simply taking law breakers off the street or establishing case law as the sole means of protecting the public. Staying within my expertise and experience, I focus more on the criminal aspect.
We arrest, detain, judicate, and incarcerate, but we protect no one as a whole if that is all we do. Yes, we remove an immediate threat, but just like attending law school, the student criminal learns. Warehousing of criminals in our jails and prisons has the unfortunate side effect of providing an institution to learn to be a more effective criminal. A cornucopia of criminal industry experts and educators are there to teach with a never-ending body of students to learn. Examples of available classes run from narcotic manufacturing 101, to establishing more effective trafficking systems, planning murder by the numbers, leadership in gang organization, advancements in technology for white collar criminal enterprises, and no one’s favorite sexual deviants in the shadows. We all know that a large portion of business is based on relationships, so where better to build those relationships. Think about that for a minute. My criminal neighbor, former schoolmate, or cousin is learning how to be a better criminal. Are we really protecting the public when the incarcerated will be your neighbor someday?
Within the span of this article, we cannot even address the cost to the customer of detaining or incarcerating. Costs of detention and incarceration, not to mention prosecution, would need a separate article to address issues of tax revenues paid for incarceration, lost taxes due to incarceration, subsidies claimed by families of the incarcerated, cost of litigation, employee training and turn over within the various systems, medical care, and many other items. Protecting the detained subject may be the most difficult customer base for many reasons. Many who are detained, or later incarcerated, suffer from some form or another of a physiological or biochemical cognitive impairment. Detained, in the context here, is defined as arrested but unsentenced, while incarcerated refers to those who are sentenced and imprisoned. Many difficulties and impairments are linked to mental illness, excessive substance abuse, or simple deviant behavior. They manifest poor impulse control, so, when you confine them into small, loud, crowded areas, the potential for problems escalates, which can lead to self-injurious behaviors when the reality of their consequences materializes. For those with substance abuse issues, involuntary detoxing with limited support creates major health risks. Those suffering from undiagnosed or untreated mental illness can be especially vulnerable. At their core, these are your neighbors, regardless of the NIMBY reaction some in society may hold, and they may return home in a few days with the same disorder with additional complications from their arrest. To be honest, I am not exactly sure what the answer is to all of it, but I do know that we gained a small foothold on implementing changes to improve our systems during the COVID pandemic that we can't afford to let subside. We still lean towards the old ways, but there was and is still progress made, which we must continue to build upon for the future. The breakthroughs and gains we learned during that experience demonstrates that it doesn’t take years as some previously thought. Below are some things we agreed upon or implemented during this time, and there should be no reason why we do not continue our efforts to improve outcomes, lest return to the unsuccessful history we knew. • Rules and laws have discretion built within. • Absorbingly high bonds may not always be in the best interest of our customer base. • Attorneys shouldn’t have to waste billable hours
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waiting at a detention facility to communicate with their client when technology is available while there are other essential tasks that must be completed to protect them. • Detention facilities can write contracts to ensure vendors ensure privilege is maintained whether through the mail, over a telephone or through a video conference. • Diversion programs are successful even with a percent of failures.1 • Judges can set bond schedules that include P.R./
O.R. to include aggregating multiple charges focusing on the most severe as the controlling. • Detention centers can entrust attorneys to move freely through the facility to manage time for all involved. • Detention centers have learned attorneys who violate rules can still represent their clients without coming inside the facility, and the hardest opponent on violations is the
Bar Association.2 • Law enforcement must understand one charge often sufficient during arrest unless it’s based on existing warrants, and, while that is not always a 100% accurate statement, we have to learn it’s not personal. • Bond hearings can be conducted 365 days a year and could occur twice daily with available technology. • Drug treatment can begin in detention, with after care and handoffs to providers for continued treatment enhances success.
1 Maybe I am too old-school, but wouldn’t a diversion program where we allow as an alternative to incarceration for people to work and live in government sponsored infrastructure rehabilitation programs make sense? I believe there is a blueprint on the shelf called WPA. Just think, volunteers could work an 8-hour shift, earn a wage, have a place to live while they get back on their feet, and pay the cost to the courts at 25 dollars a day rather than sit in a cell for the same rate, then program for a couple hours before bed. Yes, there will be failures but there will also be successes.
2 Treat the compliant attorneys as partners and cull the violators with remote access to clients via technology. • Incarceration costs continue to rise, and, if you can’t properly staff a unit, you need to reduce the number of units you have. 3 • And my personal favorite, the Public Defenders are creative, passionate, and should have a seat at every planning committee because they represent many of the customers who enter the judicial system. As the COVID pandemic slows and releases its stranglehold, many diversion planning groups will reconvene in our quality Tulsa programs. Also, we need to embrace and encourage those that are being developed. As an Early Settlement mediator, I know the civil side of the courts has not fully developed all diversion options. Consider if we could develop some type of early settlement program for low level offenses as a way to unburden the courts who are suffering under the backlog of cases postponed during COVID. Our courts will struggle for years to come from the pandemic’s setback, so diversion programs, whether through existing methods or creation of new ones, could only help these issues. Personally, I want to thank those who have pioneered and embraced many of the changes forced upon us by COVID. After 36 years of service, I retired and moved into the private sector following the tragedy of COVID, and I hope no other generation must transition through it again. Let us employ this unfortunate experience as a catalyst for change. Remember, we all provide a service to the same customer base. I have been published in professional law enforcement articles, but this is a new crowd. My sincere wish is that you find this short article as thought provoking as I intended in putting these words to paper. I welcome any feedback or continued conversation individually as well. If you would like to discuss this further, please email me at dbparker1945@gmail.com. Thank each of you for what you do serve the customers in our systems.
3 Fewer people want to work in this profession, and the turnover rate is over 50% in many places. We the customers are responsible for the cost.