EDITORIAL FOR MARCH 20-22, 2010

I’m Cave MANager Paul Lotsof.   Unless you’ve been leading a very sheltered life, you’ve heard that Arizona’s State Government is in a financial mess.   Mass unemployment has reduced the state’s revenues while expenses remain out of control.   Let’s have a look at some of this state’s operating costs.   Did you know that Arizona has one of the highest incarceration rates of any state in the nation?   At this moment, about 50,000 Arizona residents are confined to various prisons and jails scattered all over the state.  We spend nearly a billion dollars a year on the Arizona Department of Corrections.   One wonders if Arizona has any worse of a crime problem than most other states have.    The problem with statistics is that they are mere numbers and they miss the human element of locking up so many people.

As luck would have it, I happen to be acquainted with several people who are presently behind bars in Arizona and I’d like to tell you two of their stories.   First, let’s talk about a guy I know who shares the same first name with me.  Besides having the same first name,  Paul and I have very little in common.   He’s a little guy who stands only five foot five.   He’s a Tohono O’odham Indian who was born and raised in Sells on the reservation.   Paul’s mother died when he was a child and he didn’t get along very well with his dad.   When he was about sixteen he decided to seek out a better life in the big city so he got a ride into Tucson.    Having no job skills and no inclination to work either, Paul found out where the handouts were.  He also found that on a cold winter night or on a sweltering summer afternoon he could feel less pain after drinking a few beers.   A few beers and a few more beers.    After getting good and drunk, Paul would suddenly be confronted with a law of physics; what goes in must come out.     He’d step into a convenience store or a gas station and ask to use the restroom.   He’d be told that the lavatory was for customers only.  When your bladder is bursting and you’re drunk as a skunk, the last thing you want to hear is that you can’t use the restroom.   Paul did what he had to do and got charged with indecent exposure.   What Paul didn’t know was that Arizona has a strange law that says anyone who gets three convictions for indecent exposure becomes a sex offender even if sex has nothing to do with it..   And you become a sex offender for the rest of your life.   Once you become a sex offender you must also carry a special sex offender ID card for the rest of your life.

Several years ago, Paul got caught without his sex offender card and he ended up in jail which wasn’t all that bad because he got free room and board which beats sleeping in a gully somewhere.  Paul got released from jail and a few months later he again got caught without his ID card.   This time the judge sentenced him to prison.  More free room and board.

Paul was released on parole last summer and I happened to run into him.  I asked him if he had his sex offender ID card and he said he hadn’t gotten one yet.   I gave him a ride over to the DMV office where the cards are issued.  We filled out the form and I offered to pay the fee.   The clerk shook her head and said that she couldn’t issue him the card unless he proved that he was a sex offender.   Who would make a false claim to being a sex offender?   Rules are rules and Paul had to first go to the sheriff’s office and get the proof.   Unfortunately he didn’t do that and a month later he again was arrested for not having his special ID card.   This time an unbelievably narrow minded judge sentenced Paul to three years in prison and he’s now in Florence getting free room and board along with free medical and dental care at a cost to Arizona’s taxpayers of about $65 a day.   If Paul does the full three years, the bill will add up to well over $70,000 just because Paul didn’t have an ID card last summer.  Now let’s make a guess that Arizona’s jails and prisons contain fifteen people in Paul’s situation.   That’s over a million dollars just because Arizona has a stupid  law that makes all indecent exposure incidents into sex crimes even when the motive has  nothing to do with sex.   And why the lifetime registration requirement?   Murderers and armed robbers don’t have to register for life after they do their time.   

Then there’s the case of Conrad.  In 1989 Conrad got into a fight with another man in Safford during which Conrad hit John in the head with a screwdriver.   Conrad then compounded the problem by taking John to a ditch and leaving him there.   The next morning John crawled out of the ditch and got help.   Conrad couldn’t afford a lawyer so he got convicted of attempted murder and kidnapping and a sentence of 28 years.   Thus far, Arizona’s taxpayers have been taken to the tune of just under half a million dollars to keep Conrad away from screwdrivers.

Want to save the state untold millions of dollars?   Maybe it’s time for Arizona to come out of the dark ages and change some of these ridiculous  laws that are intended to penalize criminals but which mostly  penalize the taxpayers.    If we could just change the law on indecent exposure we’d free up plenty of cash that could be used to educate our children.  

  I realize that I’m not a typical Arizona  voter but when I hear someone campaigning for office and yelling about how tough he’s going to be with criminals, I look at the price tag for all that toughness and I vote for someone else.

I’m CAVE MANager Paul Lotsof and the opinions you’ve just heard are mine and not necessarily anyone else’s.   If you’d like a copy of this editorial  or you’d like to express your opinions, go to the CAVE web site at WWW.CAVEFM.com.   That’s CAVEFM.com.