If someone asked you to take a fake check to a store and buy $600 worth of merchandise so that you could get some more crystal meth would you do it? I work with a guy who is a parole officer part time and he showed me a letter a person wrote explaining his side of the story telling why he did exactly what I just mentioned. The parole officer showed me his record (all of this is public information) and the record was well over five pages long showing that he had been arrested on an average of four to five times a year for the last several years. Here is his story exactly as he wrote it.

The night before I came to jail I was in a crystal meth house getting high but I wasn't high enough and I had no money and I wanted more meth so this guy at the meth house asked me if I had a picture ID I said yes so he asks me if I'll go shopping with him I said ok why do you want to know if I have ID? He says do you want some more meth I tell him yes. So he says cash this check for me and get me some clothes and I'll give you some meth so I smoked some more meth and he leaves the room and comes back with this personal check with my name on it and we leave to go to Shopko in Sugar House and he starts putting stuff in the cart and tells me get something for me so I put some clothes in the cart and proceeded to go to the cashier to pay the lady tells me the total it was over $600 worth of stuff I present my ID and check and right away the cashier takes the check to the manager and that's when I knew something was wrong that's when store security came and held me until the police came and they brought me to jail that was a month ago. This event and sitting in jail has made me realize that meth is going to kill me or put me in prison and I want to stop using it and I think I know in my heart that I want to be sober.

I asked the parole officer what would eventually happen to this guy who was around 27 years old. He said, eventually he will end up committing a crime that will land him in jail for a long time. How long will he get for this crime, I asked? Approximately six months. Why won't his sentence be longer since his record is so long? The court system will allow him to plead guilty to a lesser crime. Why? It is too costly to have all of the court proceedings for this type of crime.

Take what you want from this. I have so many thoughts and feelings regarding this subject. What led this kid to a life like this? How can our court system keep just putting him back on the streets until he does something that "merits" real jail time. It's pretty scary to think about. I'm not suggesting locking everyone who commits a crime for the rest of their life. There just has to be a better way.