You win.
You made me care about Paris Hilton.
Not sure if y’all have heard, but Paris Hilton was released from jail after serving three days of her sentence (probation violation in a reckless driving case), and is being allowed to serve the rest of her sentence under house arrest. The reason? An “unspecified medical problem.”
And I care.
I’m furious.
(P.S. The picture of the Eiffel Tower is there because I couldn’t stomach the thought of having that vacant rat-faced smirk on my blog.)
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Addendum: She’s back on her way to jail.
Good.
I’m tempted to say “okay, maybe sometimes the system works.” Except… how many other rich influential folks are getting special treatment by the justice system in cases that aren’t as well publicized and don’t raise as much of a shitstorm? And I’m not even talking about the day-to-day injustices: the “driving/ walking/ breathing while black” arrests, the greater penalties for crack cocaine than powder, yada yada.
The fact that it took a huge public outcry to get justice served for the spoiled princess isn’t a sign that the system works. It’s a further sign of just how broken it is.
Al Sharpton has this one right:
“If she was a coal-miner’s daughter, she would have been treated differently. And if she was a black multimillionaire, platinum hip-hop star, she would have been treated differently.”
I couldn’t say it better myself.
If you have any interest in how women in California prisons are treated when they AREN’T Paris Hilton, read the newsletter of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, “The Fire Inside,” at http://www.womenprisoners.org/
I agree with your overriding point: the essential reason Paris got cut loose from jail is a general understanding that in our society, jails aren’t for rich people. When she screamed “This is wrong1” as they dragged her out of the courtroom, she had a point, and it’s really easy to see why she felt that way. Everybody feels that way, at some level. Jails and prisons are for POOR people. We all know that. And that’s why the sheriff let her out.
On the other hand, from what I’ve been reading, I don’t actually think it was the huge public outcry that got her sent back. The judge was apparently just about as pissed off about this as judges ever get. Don’t know if you caught the little detail that when he sentenced her after the probation violation, the judge actually specifically said “No home confinement alternative.” The Sheriff directly disobeyed the judge’s order; judges hate that. Why the judge didn’t slap the sheriff with a contempt citation is a mystery to me; the prosecution asked him to and he sure could have if he’d wanted. He could have ordered the sheriff to serve a week in jail as Paris’s cellmate if he’d wanted to. Anyway, when some corrections official directly disobeys a judge, something is going to change, public outcry or no public outcry.
Oh, one more thing. From what I’ve been reading on the legal blogs, home confinement is actually not that wildly unusual in the case of short-term DUI jail terms in Los Angeles. It’s not universal by any means, but Paris is far from being the only short-term prisoner to receive this alternative. The county jail system down there is very seriously overcrowded, and the Sheriff’s Department is in a never-ending struggle to find space for everybody they’re supposed to incarcerate, and that does involve making decisions about who to transfer to house arrest. Under normal circumstances, this is something the sheriff really has the discretion to do.
The thing that makes these circumstances abnormal isn’t, specifically, the fact that the prisoner in this case is rich, blonde, gorgeous (ok, I’ll admit it: on a purely physical basis, she’s hot), notorious, and rich; what makes them abnormal is that, as I mentioned above, the judge specifically said “no home confinement.” Judges get to say stuff like that, corrections people get to listen and obey, that’s how it works. The judge, I suspect, was taking into account the fact that the degree to which home confinement is actually punishment varies directly with the quality of the home. (If I could arrange to get punished by being forced to spend a month confined to a multi-gazillion-dollar home in Hollywood with a staff of servants and a fully stocked bar, I’d run right out and commit a crime; I think most people that aren’t multi-gazillionaires feel that way.) But as a general matter, this wasn’t a COMPLETELY off-the-wall move on the sheriff’s part. The fact that the judge saw fit to bring up the home-confinement option at all is a pretty big clue that it’s not unheard of.
Ok, on the chance I might get flamed for this, I think she probably should have gotten the home confinement. It’s not that I believe jail is for poor people and the rich should get off, I don’t, far from it. But most of the people who want her to go to jail don’t even know what crime she committed- a big clue to whether or not the punishment fits the crime. Most people want her to go to jail because they think she deserves it it a general sense.
There is the importance of the perception of justice- If people feel the rich get off then this can be dangerous to society. I think one of the reasons that there is such a racial split on the OJ Simpson verdict is that whites feel that a rich guy got off while blacks feel that finally a black person got what whites usually get. This sort of perception is dangerous to society on both sides because it is important to believe that we all receive fair treatment.
Which brings me to Paris Hilton. If you take away her fame and money, she is a clearly a girl with very little intelligence, bordering on retarded. She got in this mess because she signed tickets without clearly understanding what they meant, just yielding to what the police officer would tell her to do. The appropriate response to this situation is to take away her license, but 45 days in jail? Do we even know if she can read? (seriously) I think most of us are appalled by letting the mentally retarded be executed, and this is a similar, although less extreme, version of the same thing.
It’s true that a black hip hop star would probably be treated differently, but justice isn’t about giving out equally bad punishments, it’s about giving out equally good punishments. In my view, severely mentally deficient people who have a hard time driving should not be allowed to drive, but not be put in jail, rich or poor, black or white.
I am commenting b/c unfortunately, for better but really for worse, celebrity garbage gossip is my guilty pleasure and escape. Also, having gone to grad school for public policy, I see this thru the lens I feel like that training gave me, which is an objective analysis of the issues at hand. I have to say that in a way, I fall on the side of, after I read the facts of the case, that Paris should not have been sent to jail. Not because she herself is not horrible, I think she is. I don’t think she is retarded, I think she knowingly violated the terms of her probation, but b/c she is rich and priviledged figured she could get away with it. And part of me feels like there is a certain justice in her going behind bars and being treated like anyone else would be. But that is the problem. She is not. Per Sheriff Baca, given the overcrowding conditions in the prison, most inmates only serve 10% of their sentences. Paris’ sentence had been reduced to 28 days, 10% is 2.8 days, round up to 3. I think, the transgression is that Baca lied about why he let her out early. He said she had a medical condition. In truth, they let nearly everyone out early. In my eyes, b/c this is happening to a celebrity and people are paying close attention (there’s been a wonderful daily fake webcam on Letterman every nite) this practice of seriously abbreviated sentences is being exposed and Baca was trying to cover it up by making it seem more an exception than a rule. So, to me, in a twisted and warped way, Paris b/c the camera follows her is shining a light on a broken system that before no one has cared to look at because only the poor and forgotten members of society fall into it. Our jail system is so overcrowded we only hold people for 10% of their time. This is a routine practice. Why are California jails overcrowded. We all know the famous statistic that the number of black men in prison and those in college is assbackwards. The political environment in our state has always favored throwing people in jail. Politicians move forward on the traction that they accomplished things b/c they have x number of people behind bars. Any politician who thinks it is better to keep people from going to jail (or go back to jail, recidivism rates are freakishly high) is soft on crime. In my view, what is happening w/Paris’ sentence is more a product of our broken Criminal Justice system (the system itself is a crime) that any favoritism. Yes, people Paris Hilton is our new Brewbaker. I envision the made for tv movie where the women in the Lynwood jail are clattering their tin jail mugs against the bars of their cells “Paris–Hilton” as she walks down the cellblock smeared and battered from her battles w/the guards to return to finish her sentence. Ok, that’s not going to happen, I actually agree w/Greta that Paris is rat-faced and horrible and probably suicidal b/c she doesn’t have her happy pills and daily facial. But I do stand by what’s really going on w/the sentence which has less to do w/Paris and more to do a battle btwn the judge and Baca in covering up the underlying travesty of our prisons where other countries consider that the US violates basic human rights b/c it is totally ok to have entire segments of our population spending their lives behind bars or rotating through rather than dealing w/the underying failure of our country to meet basic education, healthcare and housing needs.
Mike, I’m not going to flame you, but I am going to question you. Do you have any evidence at all that Paris Hilton is mentally retarded, except in the colloquial sense of the word? Mentally retarded to the point of being legally incapacitated? I think the woman is a vacant ditz, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that she didn’t understand what “probation” meant.
And as to people not knowing what crime she committed — that’s not evidence of the punishment not fitting the crime. That’s evidence that “people are idiots” and “the media is a mess.”
BTW, Jon and Hayley, I know (well, I do now) that house arrest and early release are common for short-term sentences for small crimes like DUIs (although Paris was actually put in the pokey for parole violation, not for the DUI). The problem is that house arrest for you and me is a very different thing from house arrest for Paris Hilton. I believe that, as Jon said, that’s part of why the judge in this case insisted on “no house arrest” — house arrest isn’t much of a punishment if you live in a mansion.
And Hayley, I agree that the justice system is really, really broken, and all the things you mention are part and parcel of that. But I still think that a big part of what’s broken about it is that there’s a double standard of justice depending on how rich and influential you are. Not even a double standard — a sliding scale, on which poor people of color are at the bottom, you and I are probably somewhere in the middle, and very rich white people are at the top. And I think this case is shining a spotlight on that.
What bugs me, though, is that, now that she’s going back to jail, people are going to relax and say, “See? The system works.” And the system doesn’t work.
There’s always been a class system which governs everything. It’s not just rich people getting away with murder (OJ Simpson, Klaus Von Bulow). When abortions were illegal for most of us, the teenage daughters of the wealthy could get them easily. The sons of the rich can evade military service during wartime. When the Titanic sank, the rich passengers got on the lifeboats first.
Who decided that their lives were more precious than the lives of their servants? But this type of thing has been going on for centuries. Why is that? When and how was it decided that a person’s value is measured by their income? That the life of a rich person should be spared at all costs, while poor people are dispensable?
How did this come about? I’m sure there are books about it, and I’d be interested to find and read one of them.
If you watched any episode of “simple life” I think there was ample evidence that Paris Hilton did not know what “probation” meant. The one episode I saw she did not know what a well was for or what the word “generic” meant. I think it is appaling that wealth gives people “special” rights in this and other cultures. But by the same token if there was a reality show abouta poor person who was borderline retarded in a fish out of water situation we would all be appalled, as we would at her sex acts beeing posted on the web without her approval, but because she is richer than probably all of us put together it’s wink, wink, how the mighty have fallen, isn’t it funny. It is all rather pathetic and sad.
By the way I blame her parents for her condition, I don’t think she was born stupid, I think she just was not taught anything of value or meaning.
“Not taught anything of value or meaning” is not the same as mentally retarded, or even borderline mentally retarded. And it’s very, very far from being the same as mentally retarded to the point of being legally incapacitated.
Being ignorant, shallow, and out of touch with everyday human experience is not the same as being literally, clinically retarded. I think you acknowledge that yourself when you blame her parents and her upbringing. You presumably wouldn’t say that you blame the parents of a genuinely retarded person (unless the person was retarded because of fetal alcohol syndrome or something).
No, she probably isn’t clinically retarded, although if she was I’m sure her parents would have kept that out of the media. But I do think she is of very low intelligence, at least low enough to not know understand what it meant to have her license suspended. I believe her when she said that she didn’t read the tickets she got but signed them because she was told to. I doubt she is real big on reading, and is used to having others tell her what to do in legal situations.
I just don’t see this as a jail worthy event. I wouldn’t have a problem if they took away her license permanently (I think that this should happen to a lot of people).
You know I have to laugh. I think the basic concepts are important, but I really don’t care about Paris Hilton at all, and don’t think anyone posting here does, and yet this has be one of the longest threads I have seen. It sort of reminds me of Ann Landers who wrote on many issues both large and small. Do you know what got the most mail of anything she ever wrote about? Whether the toilet roll should be hung so the paper goes over the top or comes from the bottom.
PS Over the top, obviously.
it’s sad to see that living the american dream would put you in jail. America is no longer safe for rich people.time to move on to a new country and invest in the hope of having justice as what it should stand for.being rich isnt an excuse to put anyone back in jail or in jail just to prove to the common people that the law can put rich people in jail.paris being put in house arrest isnt uncommon as it does usually happen.but saying specifically that she not be allowed to be put on house arrest because of what type her house is sick.Is it her fault that she happened to have a beautiful house compared to the commen people? same restriction was made as to anyone who was put in house arrest, you can have ppl visit you but you can’t leave the confines of your house.being on house arrest is punishment enough for everyone,even being grounded by our folks makes anyone say the world is unfair.just because she lives in a mansion doesnt mean that she would be feeling more comfy than someone living in a regular house also on house arrest compared to Paris confined to her mansion.same restriction same comfort.after all home is where the heart is.it’s just that we all want to live in a mansion.
Just to provide some contrast, here’s a woman who, having taken great precautions against drunk driving, served beer at her 16-year-old son’s party.
Her thought was that she’d rather know about it and supervise. But a judge considered her responsible in a different way, and gave her over two years in jail.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6747807.stm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19187758/
If anybody still cares about this — and believe me, I’m trying really hard to get back to the place where Paris Hilton is completely irrelevant to me — Majikthise has a good piece that says what I was trying to get at, only better.
http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2007/06/hitch_getting_t.html
It spells out the details and the sequence of events of what Hilton did — and what she did and didn’t know about her legal situation — in a way that makes me even more convinced that she deserved the sentence she got, if not a harsher one.