Rehabilitation

In Los Angeles County, both the people and members of the justice community have realized that a system based on retribution and incarceration has been a failure and has not resulted in significant increases in public safety despite its cost in destroyed lives, disrupted families and devastated communities. Throughout the County, enlightened judges have worked with justice partners and stakeholders in the communities to set up a series of collaborative courts that attempt – with significant success – to address the root problems that contribute to a person’s criminal behavior. Lloyd would support the expansion of those efforts. Afterall, most people accused of low level to moderately serious crimes will eventually rejoin society. A judge who truly believes in making a contribution to public safety in those cases must be willing to work with prosecutors and defense lawyers to determine if the parties can work out a plan to rehabilitate the individual through proper programming and monitoring rather than just controlling his docket by either being quick to send people to prison or, conversely, by routinely granting probation with minimal supervision after some arbitrary time in jail worked out by the parties with the addition of some sort of one-size-fits-all counseling.