I don’t know this person, but let’s think about the premise here. In order to be busted 138 times, it means you are NOT locked up for any significant period of time, which in turn means your “busts” are for minor things. Also the 137th didn’t deter you from the 138th! 1/x
Each bust costs the taxpayer at least thousands, probably 10’s of thousands and the total taxpayer bill for this sort of thing is certainly in the millions.
We know that the root causes of such behavior are in social factors: unstable housing is a given- in turn almost always one of the following: substance use disorders, mental illness, cognitive impairment, trauma.
The money spent on 138 busts could have paid for permanent supportive housing about 110 busts ago, but here the media advocates for a return to a policy that is literal insanity—expecting the 139th or 140th to be the one that fixes his problem.
If you think about it for just a moment, this headline proves that what we were doing before bail reform was ridiculous and ineffective. And yet it’s presented as a common sense argument return. A great case study in how America got to mass incarceration in the first place.
