‘Hot Felon’ Illustrates Culture of State Supervision, Incarceration

The booking photo of Jeremy Meeks became kind of
a thing (“meme“) on
the Internet last week. Since then, his bail has been raised to $1
million. According to friends, Meeks’ wife is upset with the
attention his mugshot has gotten. “She’s furious. Her man is in
there and people are taking it as a joke, thinking it’s funny
talking about his looks, saying all kinds of crazy things,” a
friend told
CBS Sacramento.

More interesting, however, is what led to Meeks being booked and
what his arraignment hearing last week was about. Via CBS
Sacramento:

Meeks was arraigned on eleven felony counts related to firearm
possession, street gang membership, and violating his
probation.

Stockton Police said he’s not a good guy. Meeks is a convicted
felon, having spent two years in prison for grand theft in
2002.

So the police label Meeks “not a good guy” based on a conviction
more than a decade ago, for which Meeks has done his time. Now he
is in the crosshairs of law enforcement largely because he has been
before. None of the felony charges listed above are for violent
crimes. Firearm possession is a Second Amendment right, street gang
membership arguably a First Amendment right, while probation is
largely a jobs program built on the backs of felons who have done
their time but whom the state wants to keep under adult supervision
anyway. One of the charges, not mentioned above, appears to be
called “street
terrorism.” It’s a dangerous perversion of the word “terrorism”
to include not just politically-motivated violence by non-state
actors but violent crime in general.

And yet in this case, Meeks is not accused of any specific
violent crime, while Stockton apparently has a
serious crime problem. The community may be better served if
cops target suspects accused of specific violent crimes rather than
engaging in the kind of pseudo-preventative law enforcement that
leads them back to the same low hanging fruit over and over again
while crime remains a problem.