1115.org

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I too want to scream that it’s not right.

Leave the specifics of the current Paris Hilton circus to one side for just a moment. Forget the whole stupid debate about whether she’s being punished for her celebrity or receiving special treatment because of it.

It’s not right that we have a separate jail system for persons of privilege. The big issue is not whether you get a lighter sentence, or whether you serve a smaller part of that sentence than ordinary people. The big issue is that you have a totally separate jail system, your own little deluxe enclave.

Here’s what her attorney, Richard A. Hutton, would like you to believe:

Now in jail-issued clothes, Hilton was being housed in a special unit where she was spending 23 hours a day in a solitary cell, Hutton said.

“If she was an ordinary citizen she would have been placed in the general population. … She’d be living in a dorm with 30, 40, 50 other women and the time would pass pretty quick,” Hutton said. “She is really being punished because of her celebrity.”

Here’s what the facts seem to be:

The “Simple Life” star was in the “special needs” unit of the 13-year-old jail, separate from most of its 2,200 inmates. The unit contains 12 two-person cells reserved for police officers, public officials, celebrities and other high-profile inmates.

When the law says that thou shalt go to jail, the first thing we do is we separate the prison-bound population into two groups: those who will be protected against prison rape, and those who’ll just have to grin and bear it.

That seems to be the American way. Separate but equal.

And this is why prison rape is not a big social issue. Because persons of privilege never have to suffer it. If Scooter Libby actually went to jail, and if he was not punished further because of his celebrity but placed with the general population to help him pass the time, a whole lot of aspens would be quivering in pretty short order, demanding that Americans refuse to tolerate this blight on our collective conscience for one more day.

And that’s why I hope Libby does go to jail, and suffer repeat involuntary anal and oral intrusion (nullus). Some good may as well come out of Plamegate.

(We had an extended discussion about prison rape in the comments section three months ago. This comment by Jamie is a good place to start reading that discussion.)

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Incidentally, why does Sheriff Lee Baca’s conduct not constitute contempt of court?

Leaving that legal term to one side, he has certainly conspired to commit an assault on reason.

Here’s the best sense I could make of his remarks at the press conference he held at about 3:30 Pacific time: He released her because his jail is very overcrowded (with murderers and stuff too) and there was an unspecified deterioration in her unspecified medical condition (aside to Mitt Romney: that’s what a non sequitur is, buddy) that he does not seem to actually have specific knowledge of beyond the fact that it’s not a broken arm but it’s a psychological problem, but of course he’s not going to say whether it is a medical or a mental problem, although he thinks she is the poster child for the inadequacies of the mental health medical facilities provided to inmates of the Los Angeles County jail system, and the whole problem was that she simply needed some meds, and nobody told them when she was booked that she was on meds and would need them, and that’s why he released her, so that she could get and have her meds, which he had to do, because he couldn’t give her the meds, because he didn’t know what meds she needed, and nobody could or would or did tell him, but of course he has no intention whatsoever of giving out any information at all about the medical condition that may have forced her release, because that would be a thoroughly illegal and improper invasion of her privacy.