TexasMaam
Posts: 1467
Joined: 6/22/2005
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General Response:
Reality check:
Sheriffs have a public duty, and therefore the authority, to release people for medical reasons. They do it every single day to mitigate costs to their county.
When a prisoner is in custody, their insurance doesn't pay their medical costs, it becomes the burden and the liability of the county.
The county and state subsidies pay for their doctors, their medications, their hospitalization if needed.
And before anyone gets all up in arms over that fact, remember that the county budget is paid for by: you guessed it: YOUR TAX DOLLAR! I, for one, don't want to be paying out of MY pocket to pay for doctors, psychiatrists and medication and monitoring for Paris Hilton's little hissy fit, do you?
Keeping an inmate who is mentally unstable or who is so sick they require long term hospitalization will run the county into hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of expenses, not to mention a huge lawsuit for liability if anything happens to that prisoner while in custody.
Sheriffs cut loose inmates every day that require extensive medical supervision and treatment. If they can't control their budget their county commissioners will see to it that the Sheriff isn't re-elected!
I remember a local case where a woman was burned to death in her trailer by arson, another elderly man was shot to death at his home and a neighbor was poisoned - all killed by one elderly man who was dying of cancer. He didn't have anything to lose, decided to settle some old scores before he left this earth, got even with old enemies and when he was convicted of murder he was confined to his home to die. He didn't spend more than three nights in jail. The county and the state weren't about to assume responsibility for his exhorbitant cancer treatment and life support bills.
Had I been the Sheriff watching Paris be on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown I'd have probably sent her home to take her meds and remain under house arrest, too. The judge can remand whatever he wants to remand, he's going to have egg on his face when the bill for Paris' care while in custody hits the newspapers! The Sheriff has positioned himself not to be the scapegoat for that expense, and rightly so.
I think we all know that Paris is having the first absolute two year old 'no, you can't do that, you have to do this' tantrum of her life. That's a pretty tough thing to learn at her age, most of us learn it before age three.
If her mother, father, family, and attorneys had any concern for her at all, instead of wanting nothing more than to control her inheritance, they'd see to it that she learn some responsibility for herself from this crisis, rather than keep trying to fix everything for her.
I have no doubt that her attorneys spent many an hour at the Sheriff's dept talking over a medical release to get it accomplished. Money might very well have exchanged hands under the table. That doesn't mean it's unusual. Happens every day.
In the long run Paris will still have to learn to cope with the very first hard, immovable, untractable "NO" she's ever been given in her life.
Whether she does that at home or behind bars really doesn't matter to me. It's her walk, I hope she can manage to develop as a person through this fiasco.
TM
< Message edited by TexasMaam -- 6/9/2007 8:09:55 AM >
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RE: Paris Hilton Released After Just 3 Days in Jail - 
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