Bertha Cuestas was standing outside her Highland Park apartment scratching off an instant lottery ticket when veteran Los Angeles Police Department Officers J.C. Duarte and Harold Marinelli spotted the 50-year-old from their patrol car.
They had been arresting Cuestas for prostitution and drugs since their days on the vice squad in the mid-1990s. On this warm October afternoon, she was wanted for failing to report to the judge in her most recent drug case.
"Why didn't you go to court?" Duarte asked her.
"I was busy," she replied.
Cuestas knew the drill. She asked a friend for money, then stuffed the $7.42 he gave her into her bra for the bus ride home when she got out of jail.
"How many times have you guys done this with her?" her son asked, cradling his infant daughter in his arm.
"Too many times," Marinelli said.
It was the start of a typical week for Duarte and Marinelli. Like other patrol officers throughout Los Angeles County, the longtime partners are spending more and more time picking up old regulars like Cuestas.
A Times investigation has found that thieves, drug offenders and other repeat criminals are cycling in and out of jail faster than ever.
Since 2000, the number of people booked two or more times into jails in Los Angeles County in a single year has jumped 73%, reaching 61,646 last year, according to a Times analysis. Repeat offenders now account for 42% of bookings, up from 26% in 2000.
Once booked, defendants enter a justice system whose resources have not kept pace with demand, even as crime has dropped in recent years.
There are not enough prosecutors to try them. There are not enough courts to sentence them. There are not enough jail or prison beds to house them. And there is not enough treatment to help them.
Instead, repeat offenders drain limited justice resources and are quickly back on the streets to get arrested again, taking up the time of police, prosecutors, public defenders and judges. Patrol cops are frustrated. Victims feel forgotten.
"Under any other definition of crisis, this would be an emergency," said Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who runs the nation's largest network of jails. "The system is collapsing because of its volume."
A solution, top law enforcement officials say, would require far more money than lawmakers have been willing to commit.
