This feels like the DA equivalent of pandering to right wingers? Being like “no, guys, I’ll let everyone get away with crimes, including you” isn’t going to make them vote for you!
Unfortunately the group he’s pandering to isn’t right wingers at all. Bring up the topic of homelessness in Los Angeles among a group of typical Biden voters and inside of five minutes somebody will mention putting them in camps.
Typical daily LA Times story
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón’s reform-minded outlook on juvenile justice seemed made for someone like Denmonne Lee.
When he was 16, Lee took part in an Antelope Valley gas station robbery that ended in the death of former Marine John Ruh. Lee, who was acquainted with the victim, had planned the 2018 robbery and provided a weapon to his co-defendant, according to court records. Although Lee wasn’t the shooter, he was charged with murder.
But when Gascón took office two years later, as Lee’s case was making its way through the court system, he barred prosecutors from trying juveniles as adults. Lee was convicted and ordered held at the county’s Secure Youth Treatment Facility in Sylmar until he turned 25.
Lee “responded very well” to programs in custody, authorities said. Within a year, probation officials moved him from the high-security Sylmar facility into a rehabilitation-focused setting in Malibu. After being released to a halfway house last June, Lee enrolled in community college and found work at a local nonprofit.
And then, in April, he was arrested and charged with playing a major role in another homicide.
The case has given Gascón’s critics an opportunity to directly link the progressive district attorney’s policies to a violent crime that some argue could have been prevented had Lee faced a stiffer penalty in adult court. Nathan Hochman, Gascón’s opponent as he seeks reelection in November, has spent significant time shouting out high-profile crimes that he contends are symptoms of the incumbent’s policies.
Yeah, for sure.
Although I do think that a good bit of the “put them in camps” comes from a place of well-intentioned naivete rather than malice. People just think “Well, if I were homeless and someone gave me food and a stable place to live, even if it wasn’t where I am now, I think that would be a big life improvement.”
I think that’s fair. It is a very complicated topic. For me, “put them in camps” is obviously not OK, but I do reluctantly somewhat support the idea behind CARE Courts, which to some people makes me as bad as the camp-supporters. On one side of the issue you have the “round them up and send them to the desert” people, and on the other you have “people must be allowed to do whatever they want without restriction, including living and shitting on the street, even if they are extremely mentally ill”.
I’m all for progressive reform in the justice system, but man, I don’t know about letting people involved in murders during armed robberies chill in Malibu for a minute then be released. That seems pretty extreme. Maybe the details (paywalled) around this on the first one are really favorable for the kid, but that still seems like a huge risk.
There’s an awful lot of room for leniency towards drug users and low level dealers and shoplifters and so forth before we get to accomplices in a murder facing homicide charges.
From the pieces you can put together from that quote, if the murder was in 2018 and he was let out last year, that’s 5 years? I don’t know that that’s plainly unreasonable for a juvenile.
For a 16 year old charged with murder? Really depends on the details and his involvement in the killing.
A 16 year old (guessing no previous criminal record) who robbed a gas station with his buddy, his buddy shoots and kills the clerk, and he gets popped for felony murder? 5 years is definitely on the lower side, but it’s not such an outlier that it’s exactly shocking me. Throw in unknowns such as the strength of the People’s case and whether or not he cooperated (I’m guessing he did), and I could see this being a relatively unshocking disposition in any major metro homicide prosecution.
If this were 10 years I wouldn’t even bat an eye. 5 years is like at most one standard deviation away from the norm.
I don’t know that I can support the idea that if someone’s idea of freedom is shitting in the street we need to let them do that. I don’t know where the line is for the State to detain the mentally ill for their and societies protection, but we don’t seem to be doing these people much good where it is drawn now.
What happened in this individual case is less important than the overall idea of not charging 16 year olds as adults. Like, overall what leads to better outcomes for society: imprisoning a 16 year old in adult prison for 10 or 15 or 20 years and then releasing them, or putting them in a juvenile facility for five years? Keeping in mind that in the juvenile facility they receive many more rehabilitative services than they would in prison, and they aren’t surrounded by more hardened criminals all the time, my instinct is that the five years has better outcomes for all of us, not just the 16 year old.
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Would be curious to see some sort of study/stats, just because the risk of violent crime is so strongly correlated to age of the offender I would bet the 21 year old out of DJJ would be higher risk for violent reoffending than a 45 who grew up in prison. The level of impulsivity expected from a 21 yo just out of juvenile is astronomical
Agree, the data would be interesting.
Except that in the case in question the teen’s criminal behavior was likely caused by poor judgement, greed, peer pressure, etc., rather than impulsivity. Even including something like “thrill seeking” for a robbery is still not the same thing as impulsivity.
I still think impulsivity a major driver of future risk for violent crime regardless of facts of any individual case so from a statistical at standpoint I’m not confident the rehabilitated 21yo is going to be lower risk of violent crime than they 45 released from prison. That obviously doesn’t mean we should incarcerate all males 16-28 just to be safe.
My answer would be very different depending on whether it was a murder or not. I think a 16 year old selling some drugs or stealing something or whatever is a lot less likely to re-offend than one involved in a murder.
He got him the gun? What was he doing during the robbery and shooting? Did he also have a gun? How did he get the gun? Were there gang connections? Why did he get the gun? Was he coerced or pressured or was it his idea to have a gun?
These are the questions I’d be asking before considering a reduced sentence.
Also just politically speaking, these are the cases that just absolutely destroy broad efforts for criminal justice reform in the court of public opinion.
Yeah I definitely think there’s an optimal timing to when someone gets their second chance and it’s an age not a duration of time served. I don’t know what age that is, that’s for actuaries and criminologists, but it’s definitely a number.