Charles

“Time credits can be complicated since they aren’t guaranteed and can be awarded or denied seemingly at the whim of corrections officers and circumstances beyond any rational control or prediction. However, there has been a long-standing pattern in Illinois of people sentenced to a year in prison actually serving only sixty-one days. To explain this, there was a rumor about obscure accounting bureaucracy. Apparently, state government budgetary months were rounded to thirty days. Once a prisoner was in for any amount of time longer than two months, the Illinois Department of Corrections (or maybe the specific institution) was eligible to, and in fact did, receive funds from the State to feed and house that person for a whole year. Therefore, the hustle by IDOC was to get as many nonviolent inmates as possible who were sentenced to one-year terms (primarily low-level drug possession convicts), kick them out on the sixty-first day, and take the money and run. It was so common that defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges all over the state routinely stretched ethical boundaries to dangle that number to defendants as a plea incentive.”
― Allen Goodman, Everyone against Us: Public Defenders and the Making of American Justice

“Christmas in jail is better than jail on most other days: the dangerous and depressing elements don’t disappear, but there is an atmosphere of joviality and mercy that is normally sorely lacking. There tend to be more family visits, more interactions with counselors and various volunteers, and slightly better meals.”
― Allen Goodman, Everyone against Us: Public Defenders and the Making of American Justice

“I remember our contracts expiring every two years, and the county dragging out negotiations over raises of 1 or 2 percent, sometimes for years at a time, so that we were working without formal contracts, and the dramatic contrast that was so plainly evident as patrolmen without college degrees arrived at the courthouse in their new Cadillacs and Corvettes, fresh from their lake cabins in Wisconsin.”
― Allen Goodman, Everyone against Us: Public Defenders and the Making of American Justice

“Frenzied action at the core of the cortege occurs with such concentrated strength that it appears as though the actors believe there might be a chance to stop time itself if enough energy can be focused. They look like they are trying to move heaven and earth to impose their will. On those solemn occasions when they lose their desperate battle, it looks and sounds like they’re trying to ensure that the soul of the departed ascends to the great beyond with a fanfare that commands the attention of the saints and angels. If there are any concerns about such a spectacle being too expensive or self-adulatory, they’re overcome by certain cultural preferences. Killings of the police are soldiers’ deaths; there is heroism in their sacrifice and they want you to see.”
― Allen Goodman, Everyone against Us: Public Defenders and the Making of American Justice