Analytical Blog #6

How effective is our criminal justice system?

 

 

I have answered this in a previous blog but I wanted to show another side of the topic, out of respect for Dugard. I have been aware of Jaycee Dugard's story for many years, as I have always been into the topic of true crime and missing persons cases. I have read both of her books, A Stolen Life and Freedom: My Book of Firsts and I want to bring light to her struggle. She was kidnapped at age eleven and was held captive for eighteen years by a sex offender who raped her everyday. Finally she was located and brought home with her two children fathered by Garrido. She was handcuffed to a bed in a shed and tortured as a young child into adulthood. When one hears this story they are horrified and some wonder, how did nobody find Jaycee within these eighteen years? Although she was in a hidden backyard in a soundproof shed, there were many missed opportunities to find her and bring her to safety.

 

I believe that the police were negligent in their search for Dugard, as they missed many chances to rescue her. Philip Garrido was a sex offender who spent eleven years in jail for the abduction and rape of another woman. He was released and kidnapped Dugard in the same area as he kidnapped that woman, and the police did not consider him a suspect. In an interview, Dugard stated that Garrido wore a GPS tracker ankle braclet and parole officers often came to the house to investigate, but never investigated the backyard where she was being held. If the police had monitored the tracker, they would have seen the extensive time he spent in his backyard. She was spotted in 1992 at a gas station leaving in a yellow dodge van which was recovered on Garrido's property when she was found. Also, a neighbor called alerting the police that Garrido had children living in his backyard that he may have been sexually abusing. This call resulted in no search of the premise, more years of extensive abuse. In the end, Dugard was rewarded twenty million dollars in restitution for the negligence of the police by the state of California. With all of this being said, the criminal justice system was absolutely not effective in Dugard's case. The police were incompetent in monitoring a sex offender who should not have gotten away with what he did to Dugard for eighteen years. It is very unfortunate that she had many chances to be brought to safety but was not at the hands of our legal system. I hope since this awful case and miscarriage of justice, the police have been more thorough in their search for missing people.