Claude Allen, Petty Criminal, is
Sentenced,
Well, Sort of!
Last week, former White House Advisor Claude Allen, who was the highest placed Black official in the Bush White House and one of the highest paid persons there, at $160,000 per year, a lawyer by training, pleaded guilty to the charge of theft. This is a misdemeanor for the theft of $500 worth of products from local Target stores.
The actions of Allen were seen as aberrations and simply dumb. He would go to a department store, buy an item take it to his car, and thereafter go back into the store, select an identical item, and take it to the Return Item section and request a refund on the new item he had not paid for. In 2005, he charged with having received over $5,000 through this scheme.
His action sounds like the action of a very mentally troubled man. In his explanation of why he did it, the AP reports that he only said "he lost perspective." Allen and his family (wife and four children) were moving from place to place, as much as four times in three months and also into the basement of a friend. This sounds like is a life spiraling downhill that is usually associated with drug use, yet there is no report of drugs in this case.
The question still remains in this writer's mind is this: If there is no drug use, why would Allen lower himself to shoplifting from Target stores? His crime is a low-level, poor people’s crime that a man of his education and salary rank should not need to engage in. While Abramoff was handing out large sums of money freely, why would Allen risk disgracing himself, his family, losing his job, and possibly going to jail for so little money? The options for generating legitimate money in Washington, DC are almost endless for one with his education and connections if he is astute in the least way—resigning and lobbying, writing a tell-all book, lawyering in the most lawyer-ridden city in the world, lecturing, the public speaking circuit, etc.
Fortunately for Allen, the judge in his case did not treat him as if he were a low-level criminal. He factored into his sentencing the fact that Allen and his family were already humiliated by his action and he took responsibility for his stupidity and crime. He sentenced him to "probation before judgment." Apparently, this is a type of sentence that carries no jail time (he could have gotten 18 months of jail time). The judge accepted his public embarrassment and humiliation as punishment enough. With the type of sentence he received, his criminal record will be expunged when his probation ends.
The old almost cliché, "How are the mighty fallen?" is answered by this way, by public embarrassment, not by the justice system. For we people on the pavement just look at him and see that he gets away with an empirically slim sentence. Allen will be able to practice law after his probation, a period of time that he will be under court supervision. But it is Allen's wife and children are the real human victims of this offense, and they will have to live down the shame that has been brought on them by this embarrassment of petty criminality.
[See my article on this when the news first broke.]
Simond Griote
8/7/08
