Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Dawn has read that homosexuals in West Hollywood are planning to honor a couple of deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department at this June's gay pride wingding. Now, much as Dawn appreciates a man in uniform, sheriff's deputies and other dirt aren't high on Dawn's most-likely-to-admire list. What did deputies Randy Bell and Bart Lanni do to deserve their gay gold stars?

Seems Randy and Bart (sounds like porn stars...) concocted a segregated housing scheme for LA's jailed homos. The 300-plus queers housed by LA's law enforcement establishment every day-- an astonishing figure-- are thus protected from abuse by other inmates. They are, however, relatively free to abuse each other; Randy and Bart have managed to get condoms distributed to the gay wing of the jail. (This raises the excellent question as to how the newly arrested win placement in the jail's pink ward-- do deputies require proof of homosexuality? Who administers these "tests"? Do arrestees have the right of appeal should their "oral exam" be deemed insufficiently gay?)

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Additionally, those jailed are subjected to something called SMART, Social Mentoring Academic and Rehabilitative Training, which is to provide "specialized training and education designed to reduce recidivism." While Dawn is suspicious of any such cute acronyms and of many of the therapy-speak offerings of SMART, at least county guests get a chance at computer training and high-school classes.

While Randy and Bart's homos-in-stir program boasts a 50 percent reduction in recidivism, Dawn has an even better solution-- cheaper, too: since the vast majority of the queers arrested are booked on prostitution and drug possession charges, why not decriminalize all consensual sex and drug activity, thus eliminating an enormous amount of "crime"? Instead of focusing on stopping recidivism, Dawn's plan eliminates the initial cidivism, thus freeing jails and courts to deal with real crime.