520208

As of Thursday night, 3,000 people have been arrested in Orleans Parish since I started work here on August 18th. That's 121 days. That's 24.8 people per day...I think we can safely round to 25. There are couple of things that stand out to me about this:

1.) Holy crap! I've been working here for four months already!

2.) If this rate keeps up, 9,000 arrests will happen in the year I spend working here. That doesn't quite mean 9,000 different people because some of those will be the same person getting arrested more than once in a year, but that seems to happen about once per day.

3.) If New Orleans' population is 485,000, that means that in the last 4 months 0.6% of the city was arrested. If it keeps up all year, 1.85% of the city will have been arrested. (As an aside, OPP's 6,800 average prison population represents roughly 1.5% of the city's population).

I'm going to take this opportunity to just throw out some musings about the work so far:

Most of the people come through first appearances for one of the following things:

-Domestic Abuse Battery

-Possession of illegal drugs

-Illegal possession of a gun, whether because of where you are, you're a convicted felon, you also have drugs on you, etc.

I just got the pricing list for things in prison. Some of it is reasonable, and some not so much. Ex:

Ramen - 68 cents

Bible - $5

Koran - $12

2 Ibuprofen pills - 49 cents

Toothbrush - $2.12

Boxers - $3.45

On my last intake day, which was Saturday, 24 people came through for First Appearances. We give practice levels for how serious a charge is, 1-5. 1 is a misdemeanor, while 5 is life without parole. No one that came through on Saturday had a level 4 or 5 charge. Even so, the total bond set for all 24 people was $389,500. If they all used a bondsman to get out, they would be paying between $50,635 and $58,425 total to be released. Not a single one of those 24 people had an income for their entire family unit that was even half of $50k.

All of those people who don't bond out will probably stay in jail for an average of 2 months before they even get arraigned (where they get to plead guilty or not guilty).

That's enough depressing stuff for now. I'm going home tomorrow morning, and I'll forget all about all of this. I'll have fun, visit people, laugh, and not give OPP a second thought. My clients, on the other hand, will be sitting in jail. They don't get the luxury of going on vacation, or going to see their families, or forgetting about how screwed up everything is. Because that's their life. It's just my past-time.