About Those Criminals Out on the Loose: Who Cares?

Ever the one to look for cheer in the midst of gloom or confusion, I offer this upbeat analysis about the resounding defeat of the proposed tax to build a new county jail:

Crime is overrated.

Oh, I know opinion polls always put it near the top of the public’s list of concerns about what’s wrong with society, but do people really mean what they say?

What better laboratory to use for the test than Orange County, still considered a law-and-order sanctuary. Public officials had been under the impression that you considered crime and criminals the scourge of the planet, but they must be reassessing after Tuesday’s election--or, more correctly, non-election.

For starters, both Sheriff Brad Gates and Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi had said often in their remarks that a new jail was needed if Orange County was to continue being tough on crime. You can’t be tough on crime when you can’t be tough on criminals, Gates said.

Let’s also assume that anyone who gets a daily newspaper in the county read at least one story about the jail issue. It’s safe to assume from that everyone read Gates’ rationale: that the jail system is designed for 3,200 inmates daily and often exceeds that by more than 1,000 inmates.

Regardless of how people felt about all the other nuances of the jail issue, they must have digested that fact. What’s more, even if they read only one jail story, they surely would have read Gates’ remarks about letting prisoners out early because of the overcrowding. The sheriff made the remark at every opportunity, so it would have been impossible for people to miss it.

And yet, we are left with two indisputable facts, each as significant as the other:

* Three-fourths of the people who showed up at the polls voted against the tax for a new jail.

* Only one in six registered voters bothered to vote at all. County officials say it was the lowest turnout ever for a countywide vote.

Amid all the analyses on both sides about how people are tired of being taxed and unsure about the measure, and concerned about putting a jail in Gypsum Canyon, isn’t the more logical explanation simply that they didn’t care?

If people are as anti-tax as Anaheim Mayor Fred Hunter proclaimed, how come only 17% showed up to say so? And, obviously, 25% of that group voted for the tax. If the anti-tax movement is that entrenched, where were the outraged masses to back it up? They couldn’t have been sure how many pro-jail people would show up to vote; you’d think that if they were that fearful of another half-cent tax, they would have taken time to vote to make sure Measure J went down in flames.

Hunter and others also say the measure was too vague to generate support. Again, that may help explain the votes against, but it doesn’t account for those who didn’t show up at all.

On the other side, Gates went out of his way to directly threaten people’s sense of well-being: He told them in no uncertain terms that potentially dangerous criminals were being released early or not being jailed at all. He and local judges painted a picture of a county where some criminals don’t pay for their crimes.

The public response: a gaping yawn.

That leads to one of two conclusions: people either didn’t believe Gates, or they believed him but didn’t care enough to give him what he wanted.

Voters who were on the fence might easily have said to themselves that two of the five supervisors weren’t worried enough about the problem to support the jail expansion, so why should they?

Given the apathy over the jail issue, it’s difficult to see why Gates or the supervisors would even think about going back to the drawing board. Why throw an election if nobody’s going to show up?

Your guess is as good as mine as to why nobody cares about the jail issue. Maybe, contrary to what the sheriff says, most people don’t feel that the public safety is all that threatened and believe that enough people are in jail already. They know that the most serious criminals are safely locked away, and maybe they don’t really care about the rest of them.

Anyway, I guess the point of all this is that maybe there’s no need for all the head-scratching and hand-wringing going on among the supervisors and the Sheriff’s Department. Their job is to protect the public, and if the public already feels properly protected, why bother with billion-dollar jail expansions?

Now if they can just get the judges to quit sentencing people, we can all get on with our lives.

JAIL LIMITS REJECTED: Federal judge refuses to limit prisoner numbers at county’s jails. A1