Posted on 05/04/2007 4:30:28 PM PDT by Rb ver. 2.0
LOS ANGELES (AP) - A judge sentenced Paris Hilton to 45 days in Los Angeles County jail on Friday for violating her probation in a reckless driving case.
The heiress arrived at court 10 minutes late in the back of a black Cadillac Escalade and swept into the Metropolitan Courthouse with several men in suits, ignoring screams of photographers lining the route into a rear entrance. Her parents, Rick and Kathy Hilton, also came with her.
Wearing a gray jacket and white shirt over black slacks and with a black headband on, she said nothing and appeared serious.
The celebrity case brought an unusual scene to the austere courthouse south of downtown in a commercial area. As if at a red carpet event, dozens of photographers and reporters lined up at the rear entrance. Yellow police tape substituted for velvet ropes.
TV trucks were parked nearby to beam the news worldwide and a helicopter hovered overhead. Extra sheriff's deputies stood guard.
Hilton, 26, pleaded no contest in January to reckless driving stemming from a Sept. 7 arrest in Hollywood. Police said she appeared intoxicated and failed a field sobriety test. She had a blood-alcohol level of .08 percent, the level at which an adult driver is in violation of the law.
She was sentenced to 36 months probation, alcohol education and $1,500 in fines.
Two other traffic stops and failure to enroll in a mandated alcohol education program, are what landed the socialite back in court.
On Jan. 15, Hilton was pulled over by California Highway Patrol. Officers informed her that she was driving on a suspended license and she signed a document acknowledging that she was not to drive, according to papers filed in Superior Court.
Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies stopped Hilton on Feb. 27 and charged her with violating her probation. Police said she was pulled over at about 11 p.m. after authorities saw the car speeding with its headlights off.
Hilton's spokesman, Elliot Mintz, said at the time Hilton wasn't aware her license was suspended. A copy of the document Hilton signed on Jan. 15 was found in the car's glove compartment, court papers say.
Yes..that’s Paris as a teenager.
Tell me about it, and her mother was screaming that the prosecuter was singling Paris out because she`s rich and famous. It`s incredible how above the law these people think they are. I guess they get into this God complex from everyone around them kissing their arses.
A DUI then TWO suspended license stops and all she gets is 45 days? WTF?
I would agree with you if we knew that everyone gets this type of jail sentence which I doubt. There are some people out there with four or five DUI’s and have not spent a minute in jail. I am about fairness for everyone even celebrities. Sometimes being a celebrity gets you put in jail quicker than being a regular person. Look at Martha Stewart. She would not have gone to jail as a private citizen.
I wonder (hope) she’s treated just like the rest of the prisoners by authorities. Same processing, same lovely accomdations, same food,....no special resort-like accomodations.
I agree with most of this, but they cannot allow her to get hurt, raped or killed which does happen in jail. They have to keep her separated or at least safe at all times.
I’m just SEW disoriented ....
How many prisoners do you know or have you worked with? In what capacity have yo worked with them?
I ask because I was a reserve deputy with my sheriff's office and in the line of my work I got to know a lot of prisoners.
Some don't WANT to be rehabilitated. They will game the system, and learn to say the right things, but the way they end up in court a few weeks after their release suggests to me NOT that the programs in place are bad (while I'll concede they aren't all that good ...) but that they used the programs cynically with an eye to nothing be earlier release.
What kind of rehab does Paris need? She thought what the judge said didn't matter. Do you agree? What she's learning now is that what the judge says DOES matter. I think that's a good thing.
The check forging sociopath who had no sense that HE was to blame for his crimes ... if you know anything about personality disorders you'll know that it will take an excellent shrink (and how many of those are there- and what do they cost per hour?) a LOT of work to help this guy -- and then only if he has some really strong motivation to change. I mean REALLY strong.
I hauled an extradited prisoner from New York to Virginia. The guy was an accomplished and felony-level shop-lifter -- which is pretty impressive. He saw NOTHING wrong with what he did, and he thought that fighting guards, spitting on them, hurling feces at them when they dissed him was not just morally acceptable but praiseworthy and a kind of duty. What kind of therapy do you propose for him and how much are you willing to pay for it?
I think you are comparing an impossible fantasy response to crime with the unpleasant reality, and finding, mirabile dictu, that the fantasy looks better.
DO you actually KNOW any social workers, or LCSWs? These are the people who would get the gig of rehabilitating these folks. I sent an employee (who wasn't really an employee but an obviously sick person I was subsidizing) with Borderline Personality Disorder (et al.) to get help, and her first encounters were with an LCSW -- who taught her a Sikh mantra! OH, Hey! That'll bring peace! This is a woman who might, MIGHT, be able to take care of herself after YEARS of intensive therapy.
A guy I knew, who received lots of support and pastoral and psychiatric counselling in addition to Narcotics Anonymous, who probably owned $10k plus of music equipment and dressed more expensively than I ever have, and spent money on trifles like Vanity plates - got married, had two kids, stopped going to NA, and ended up getting zonked and committing sexual assault on a minor. Fortunately he was SO zonked that all he accomplished was to scare the hell out of her.
One thing he never got was the idea that he DESERVED punishment. He was excellent at the therapeutic model of reality -- all his misdeeds were because he was ill. There was no significant moral component to his issues AND he thought all the punishment he might deserve was the feeling of remorse. Reparation, the idea that he OWED anything to any other human --- these were foreign concepts to him.
I think you underestimate the recalcitrance of moral evil and overestimate our capacity to "treat" and "heal" and "cure" -- "rehabilitate" people AND I think you have little evidence for your contentions.
I just don’t think it should be any comfier for her than anyone else. No suites or special privileges.
LOL!
Mainly there you are addressing those types that belong in prison / jail by their actions (throwing feces, for example). Yep, that gets you a jail sentence.
Our jails are not overflowing because of those on the fringe with mental disabilities like you suggested. Our court rooms and legal system is over flowing because of the bureaucracy of which it has become....that feeds itself on those of all income and mental stability classes.
Again, deliberately violent people belong in jail.....the reality is our prisons are full of people outside of that category (while we oftenly let those deliberately violent people out......and so so under the guise of "overcrowding" when its convenient).
Again, our whole legal system is set up to feed itself. I am not speaking of getting rid of "punishment" whatsoever. I am simply saying we should take the current form of "prison/jail" time punishment and replace it with another form of "time" spent doing other things.
The prison/jail systems have become nothing but a revenue / job enhancers for tens of thousands in ridiculous bloated State and Federal budgets...
Agree there is waste in both and where possible that should be stopped (we can both dream on). But where as our Defense budget provides true security and technological advancement....our prison systems (outside of violent criminals) provides security under a false premise and grows simply to serve itself.
Again, I don’t think doing time for a crime is foolish at all. Perhaps there are more effective ways of dealing with non-violent criminals (you haven’t given any).
Having human beings simply wasting their days away doing absolutely nothing behind bars is a waste. It is a waste clearly on so many levels. When there could be other options by simply replacing the "punishment phase" of "time" in prison.....with "time" doing something else more productive. Not to mention when we have tens of thousands of Gov't staffed employees on the payrolls simply to administer the needs of these "need not be there" prisoners....that is incredible waste (especially when you take into account bloated salaries, bloated offices and bene packages that only Gov't employees can get).
Look at all those we have in "prison" for "white collar" crimes. These people are talented, educated (oftenly), well schooled in one trade or another (financial, business mgmt, technology, etc, etc). Martha Stewert being a recent example (of popularity)....but there are literally thousands of Mrs. Stewart's out there in jails...that need not be there.
Society (and budgets) would be better off if Ms. Stewart was made to teach her knowledge (freely) to H.S. seniors, local community college courses, etc, etc.
This same would hold true for the financial expert in jail, for the computer science tech, for the small business owner, etc, etc. All of these peoples would have much more (both tangible and intangible) knowledge to be passed on. Especially more so then the corp of public shool teachers and college prof's we have out there today. The knowledge that could be passed on would prove a tremendous benefit to many whom could never afford such advise / experience.
For those non-violent individuals who haven't acquired such specific expertise. Well there is always plenty of simple labor that needs to get done in community after community. And there is nothing derogatory about putting in a days work at whatever that may be. It would serve a larger purpose and without question be a better use of human resources then simply having a person sit behind bars (while other foolishly have jobs just to oversee this person sitting behind bars).
Best regards,........And again, violent criminals deserve to be in prison / jail. I'm a supporter of the death penalty (though the more I see how flawed our legal system is, I'm beginning to question that)....with that said, if one takes a serious look at our current legal system, I believe you can't help but realize it has simply become a bureaucracy thats main objective is to feed itself....And much less about security or punishment.
Only the drugs and SOME of the child/support alimony cases struck me as possibly not where they needed to be. I did not see a huge bureaucracy devouring dollars. I saw a bunch of people working extremely hard and not too inefficiently.
And I don't think the sociopaths and personality disorders are all that rare frankly. There are a heck of a lot of people out there who just do not get it.
the reality is our prisons are full of people outside of that category
Sez who? I'm willing to be educated. I just don't' think that's right, and I don't think Martha Stewart is a good example.
Do you have a disagreement with the idea of punishment? If I defraud you non-violently is it enough for me to make you whole? If I can afford it should I just pay enough extra to make the government whole for the time of the judge, clerks, DA, police, etc? Would that be enough?
If punishment is okay, what makes you say all this about prisons and bureaucracies? I have a friend who is a guard at a maximum security penitentiary. They're sure as heck not overstaffed. There over-staffing would be good -- anything to show the guys that it's just not worth it to break bad on another prisoner or a c.o.
I could see some kind of work release for white collar folks in programs say in education. But if somebody eats up the proverbial widow's pension and can't restore her, I think a time, maybe even a long time, of not getting to choose what's for supper or whether to stay up late to night and sleep in tomorrow might be a good thing.
I see lots or repeated assertions that the courts and the jails are bloated and self-justifying or whatever. I don't see a better alternative that takes into account what it costs to get the people to make such a thing work OR the question of some kind of punishment. These aren't children for whom all punishment is, we hope, educational and remedial. Most of the folks in jail knew perfectly well that what they were doing could get them in trouble, and they thought the chance was worth it -- or they didn't think, itself a culpable failure.
I think it's GREAT that young Ms. Hilton is going to do three or so weeks in the pokey. Can you say, "Wake up call?"
If the point is to get value out of these people and to use their skills, I think you need to wargame it a little. For Paris, she was given chance after chance to abstain from driving. She just wasn't interested. Martha Stewart might have been trust-worthy when it comes to driving herself to home ec classes at P.S. 229, but the whole thing about a lot of white-collar crimes is that there people were in fiduciary positions, that is TRUST positions, and they abused the trust.
SO what do you do if they're coming to class so hungover they can hardly function? or if they suddenly get a protracted but subtle respiratory problem which means that they can't always make it to class, and their physician of choice is booked for 6 weeks. What if they just walk away one day -- and you catch 'em two weeks later in Tijuana?
You're going to have to extradite them, you're going to have to have hearings and what not to determine what to do with them. And what are they doing in the meantime and where are they?
I think the notion is lovely. I don't see how it can work, and especially how it can generate value enough to pay for itself- or even to be cheaper than normal incarceration.
Disagreement with punishment? Not at all. All for it. I simply see the current punishment phase of routinely giving out "jail time" as a waste.
Again, the notion that our legal system is not bloated, ridiculously large, tremendously expensive (and written by lawyers who clearly have an agenda not to mention a personally rewarding interest in seeing such a system grow).
I think the punishment phase (what we derive as correct punishment...."time in prison/jail") is foolishness.
You suggest prison guards aren't overstaffed. Perhaps in some prisons / jails they are not. But the administration that oversees those prisons / jails most certainly is...I'd be willing to bet.
It is just like the public school systems. The costs that go into the "administrative" budgets are ridiculous....As compared to what is actually being spent in the classrooms.
Example, 36 students per class in Michigan - Average student in MI is worth apprx 10,5000 (slightly more now I believe). That is $380,000 per class room. Sans $50,000 for the teacher and we are talking an extra $330,000 being eaten up by bureaucracy (some of it justified but the vast majority not!...yet we constantly and foolishly hear "we don't spend enough on education".)
This is BS. She violated her probation not once but twice and she gets a month in half? Her original sentence was 36 months, suspended with probabion. She should have to do the whole enchilada. Poor poor Hilton. F her.
You forgot the /sarc tag. She belongs in the can. SHe broke the law, thumbed her nose at the consequences and now it’s time to ante up. Screw her, she deserves it, although she should do the whole 3 years just for being an arrogant bitch who thought the law didn’t apply to her.
Nobody will agree with you more enthusiastically than I about top-heavy administrative staffs in gov't. organizations. I still ask you my favorite question: Compared to what?
The real often looks bad compared to the fantasy. The spouse you have isn't half so wonderful as the spouse you can imagine. But he or she is probably pretty good compared to the the other people you might actually talk into marrying you.What practical system do you propose? It's easy to find what's wrong with anything in the real world. It's not so easy to come up with a better answer that could actually happen.
We are not spoiled tyrants who can say, "This is no good; take it away and bring me something better." It's going to be up to us to come up with the something better and to make it plausible and then practical.
Forty-five days in jail? I’ll believe it when I see it!
My point being there are alternatives to "time in a jail cell". Home detention programs, with community service (of all vary types) is a better option for starters (IMO). Instead of having people waste away doing absolutely nothing in a jail cell.....(where the administrative costs of over seeing them is ridiculous).
We have created a system / bureaucracy that simply thrives off of itself growing and growing.....and then suggests "well come up with another that isn't going to be complicated"....(a la, the argument of the Public schools from changing away from the status quo)...
The age old reality of nothing is more complex then avoiding the obvious comes to mind.....And what is clear and obvious is we have a bloated, ill-effective, constantly growing and expanding legal system that thrives simply because of its own mandated existence.
The notion that because I don't have time to write a thorough report on various avenues that would make much more sense for nonviolent criminals doesn't mean there aren't any. We have an overcrowded jail and prison system...which is made up of large numbers of nonviolent people. That is just silly and a waste of human resource.
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