Wednesday, November 14, 2007

It's Thug Thursday (11/15/2007) in Memphis, TN



This week, I decided to see who is in jail with the highest number of arrests. It turns out to be Clark Anderson, a m/b, rni # 11018. Here's his mugshot and some information about his 262 bookings in the county jail.

Here's a link to his rapsheet from the JSSI system which shows all the entries into the system. If you are interested in looking at the data for yourself, click this link and enter his RNI number (11018)

Do you think it would be fair to assign a dollar value of $500.00 to each arrest? Could it be that this person has cost the taxpayers that much money? Think about what goes into an arrest. There is the cost of the squad car, the officers, the jail, the jailers, the public defender, the court clerks, the medical staff, the jail clerks, the judges, the court officers, etc. Wouldn't it be great if we could get people to straighten up or leave the community? We could take the money we are pouring into fighting crime and divert it to other things.

Here's a synopsis of the crimes Mr Anderson has been booked on:
click to enlarge


Here's a breakdown of arrests by year:

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes, have always liked your ideas. I am in total agreement on the broken justice system, and your idea of the matrix point system on repeat offenders is wonderful. Memphis truly has a revolving door of crime, what is the saying? "three hots and a cot" for being put in jail? Put me on your list of those in favor of the sentencing matrix.
Also I have often wondered why the mugshots of all offenders who have ever been in jail is not public, yet the mugshots of only the current jail inmates is public at: http://www.shelby-sheriff.org/programs/kiosk.asp and also a public kiosk is set up in the jail lobby for those wishing to visit inmates. The information is there, but sanitized to cater to the relatives seeking visitation times for their beloved inmate. Seems like more of the information of the arrestee should be public and the JSSI information should be consolidated along with the mugshot info to show how many times each person has been arrested and put in jail. Actually everything should be in one place to see so to speak. Enough of jumping around various websites to find out court dates/arrests/etc.

Let me know if I can be of any help.

Anonymous said...

wow! 262 Arrests for this guy!

Assuming that all of these arrests were for C Misdemeanors (which they were not; some are obviously arrests for more serious A/B Misdemeanor and Felony offenses), which are punishable by 30 days in jail IF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY WAS NOT CUTTING DEALS WITH CRIMINALS, THIS GUY COULD HAVE BEEN IN JAIL RATHER THAN COMMITTING CRIMES ON THE STREETS AND COSTING THE TAXPAYERS MONEY.

262 Offenses multiplied by a minimum of 30 days for each offense comes to a total of 7680 days in jail. Divided by the number of days in a year (365), that means that, WERE IT NOT FOR BILL "NO DEALS" GIBBONS CUTTING DEALS AND LETTING THIS GUY OUT OF JAIL, HE WOULD BE SERVING 21.5 YEARS IN JAIL.

Crime reduction in Shelby County will start when we have a District Attorney General who is serious about punishing offenders. As long as we have a guy interested in the political careers of himself and his wife, more than the enforcement of the law, we will suffer.

Stiffer penalties, bigger fines, or whatever other red herring you wish to use to distract the attention of your readers will make change nothing. You must realize the problem is with your good friend and buddy, Bill Gibbons.

When you put the pressure on your friend Bill to live up to his "NO DEALS" PR BS, we will see crime reduced because these serial offenders will be in jail.,

John Harvey said...

I'm afraid your anger is misdirected and you are also mistaken. Bill Gibbons doesn't pass sentence on criminals, judges do, and they are constrained by the existing laws (though they have a wide degree of discretion).

Bill Gibbons is not in my "inner circle" of friends. He is merely the DA and I think he's doing what he can under the existing laws.

That's where the problem lies. In order to change people's behavior, we need a sentencing matrix where the punishment is increased upon each conviction. Before that can happen, the law must mandate that the current sentence be stiffer than the previous one.

These thugs must learn that the penalty for being a criminal is too stiff in Tennessee. Then they might stop being a criminal, or relocate to Detroit!

John Harvey said...

Thanks Stubbsie,

I ran into a couple of the I.T. managers from the county yesterday and discussed what I perceive to be a few problems with the JSSI system, such as the fact that when you run an arrest summary by RNI number, it puts the most recent cases on the last page. For a guy who has been arrested 100 times or more, that will be about 10 pages later. I also asked about when the web service would be available so we could pass the rni number and get a rap sheet with all arrests and dispositions in one page. They said they are working on it, but it will be a while yet.

Having a public kiosk that allows the users to look these thugs up, return a mugshot and an exhaustive report on their court activities will only make us better.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure this idea just popped into your brain to blog about. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the news promo's running on wpty. They got this information two months ago from the sheriff's department and tracked these guys down.

John Harvey said...

"I'm sure this idea just popped into your brain to blog about. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the news promo's running on wpty. They got this information two months ago from the sheriff's department and tracked these guys down."

Dang, I should have known some smart person would find me out!< G >

Actually, if you had looked you would have seen that I have been blogging about this guy and the other repeaters for over a year. Check this very blog and go back to July of 2006 if you really want to see the truth. How do you think the news media got the information on who the most arrested person is? It certainly wasn't from the SCSO.

Who uncovered this problem isn't really an issue though. If someone else wants to take credit for pointing out the glaring problem, and I'm sure Luttell would love to take credit for another one of my programs, so be it. The bottom line is this, we first have to admit to the extent of the problem, then formulate a plan to attack it. Give credit to whoever you want, but let's fix it, regardless.

John Harvey said...

Here's the link to my initial blog of the top 10 arrests in Shelby County. It turned out there were way more arrests than I initially thought, but the players were the same. Only the numbers changed.

click here