If the jail and infrastructure is already there and the guards are already working and getting paid, what’s the incremental cost of adding one more body for 30 days? Food? Perhaps I’m missing something.
I can understand the argument that the system as a whole is flawed and that we should be reducing the number of people we lock up and thereby reduce the infrastructure and manpower required for support, but in the current system I don’t see how this one girl is gonna cost us a shit-ton of money to teach her a lesson she clearly needs.
I think you might be saving money in the long run. Maybe she won’t be back for something worse. I know someone who has been let off pretty easy so far - she would have benefited from some jail time if it would have slapped her in the face and shown her where she was going wrong.
Anyhow, I doubt she’ll stay in all 30 days.
Not to mention that a judge knowing he is being taped may not want to set a precedent of taking crap, for fear that others will waltz in and do the same stuff.
If I had any reason to believe jail was likely to reform this young lady, instead of being more likely to introduce her to other criminals whom she can learn from and maybe expand her criminal activities after her time incarcerated, I may feel the same way. Unfortunately the extremely high recidivism rate makes me think that justice has not been satisfied, although a judge may have been.
I would rather have seen “30 hours of community service” “60 hours of community service” “200 hours of community service” being handed down instead of jail time. Have her out picking up trash along the highway instead of taking the time and space away from a violent offended that we need sequestered from society.
Why? First, she shows up to court completely high, then proceeds to giggle through her hearing while flipping her hair around. Then answers the Judge’s direct question with bullshit slang. Then wanders away, saying “Adios!” And then tells him to fuck off.
How is any of that not contemptuous of the Court?
Seriously, is that behavior acceptable to you? Ever, in a court of law?
Yeah, I mentioned it in the OP, I thought the judge was being nice until that bird-flip. He seemed a little annoyed yet amused, just another day at work, and then she flipped him off and he flipped out. I would have, too, but much sooner, right around the hands with the “look at my pretty hair, don’t you see my sexy hair? Here, I’ll stroke it and stuff so you can see how nice and sexy I am with this long hair. C’mon, I’m so cute, this works with the boys who listen to Rick Ross with me. Oh, here, I’ll pull it up into a knot, that works with the boys, too, hey! Why don’t you take it easy on me because I’m all cute and sexy and stuff!!” But then, I don’t have to deal with dipshits like her every day. I’m sure the judge is a bit more used to it until they show him the birdie.
The judge is an asshole. In this case the defendant happens to be a bigger asshole. Doesn’t make him any better. Where was the lecture? He wasn’t doing this for the betterment of society, he did it to stroke his own ego.
First off she did not show up to court high, she is wearing a prison uniform so if she was high it was because she was arrested while high. Second i didn’t see anything disrespectful about her behavior until the judge went off on her for absolutely no reason. You might be annoyed by a teenage girls mannerisms but there is nothing inherently disrespectful about them. Her reaction after the judges idiotic over reaction to her goodbye might not have been smart but it certainly was completely deserved.
If you didn’t see anything disrespectful, then it may just be that you don’t have the same idea of respect as most of society. Hopefully, you won’t end up in jail because of it.
That aside, her refusal to directly answer his question regarding the value of her jewelry was sufficient to hold in her in contempt. You don’t get to choose how to act in a courtroom, it has rules and they aren’t optional.
I really feel that the girl was innocently disrespectful, not deliberately so, that is, she probably didn’t have much court experience, and she should have been given the benefit of the doubt, at least up to the finger/fuck.
If you ever watch the TV court shows, you can see that many ordinary people simply aren’t that court-savvy. They don’t dress appropriately and they aren’t confident of how to act. Court has its own procedures and protocol that are quite different from other venues, and much more formal than most places you are likely to visit. You aren’t taught this in many places.
I don’t think she was refusing to answer the judge’s “how much?” question as much as she didn’t know what to say. Maybe she didn’t know its worth. When I watched it, I kept thinking, “should she minimize or maximize the jewelry’s value?” because it was probably going to be used to set bail. Would he set it high if she was rich, or low because she wasn’t? That’s a hard thing to answer instantly if you’re put on the spot and don’t know how the game is played.
Are you suggesting that this person has never had the experience of behaving seriously in the presence of a figure of authority? it’s not any more complicated than that.
There’s really no game. If she didn’t know the value of her jewelry, all she needed to say was “I don’t know how much it was worth.”
And the girl was obviously high. that had more of an effect on her behavior than inexperience.
She will not learn bold and dangerous techniques which will further endanger the public from anybody in the jail. That is a sort of old wives tale that cons use to make themselves feel tough/smart/etc…
What she will do is go in, keep getting high, argue with the locals, tell them all about how tough she is, and told off the judge. She will learn how to smuggle drugs at the bottom of a cigarette pack, and inside of a book. She will also get caught. Since she is hot, somebody will pay the bail for her. She will not pass on her newly learned skills of death dealing and mayhem to her cohorts outside, since the crime sherpas were high and incoherent while they were teaching tricks of the trade, and she was high and oblivious during Diamond Smuggling 101.
You know what? There are times when you need to be polite and follow the rules. Some people need to learn that the hard way. You’re standing before someone who has the power to incarcerate you for your crimes, and you’re choosing to be an impolite, disrespectful dumbass? Welcome to the real world. No part of this is “unfair”, “crooked”, “wasteful” or “ineffective”.