Plan Would Keep Elderly Petty Thieves Out of Jail

The man was 72 years old, had money in his pocket and credit cards in his wallet. Yet, he stole a set of socket wrenches.

“He can’t say why he did it,” recalled Peggy Weatherspoon, manager of senior citizens’ services in Orange County’s Community Services Agency. “He was humiliated and ashamed and embarrassed and terrified. At age 72, he’d never been in the criminal justice system before.”

There are enough seniors like the socket-wrench shoplifter to prompt county officials to ask the Board of Supervisors to establish a pilot program in South Municipal Court aimed at keeping senior citizens out of jail for petty theft.

On Tuesday, the supervisors will consider the idea of creating a “South County Senior Diversion” project and having Weatherspoon’s office report back in 60 days with a plan and budget figures.

Proposed Program

The state Bureau of Criminal Statistics reported 391 arrests of people over 55 in Orange County last year for petty theft. The program in South Municipal Court is expected to handle 120 people a year.

Most of the people over 55 accepted for the diversion program will receive physical or psychological examinations, and all will receive individual or group counseling. They also will be required to perform community service work, much of it at senior citizen centers.

Weatherspoon said that social service agencies across the nation “are finding a fairly high incidence” of petty theft among people near or at retirement age.

“It seems to be related not to need, that is to the need for food, shelter or clothing,” Weatherspoon said. Rather, seniors act “more out of anger or depression or in many instances not really knowing why they did it,” she said.

‘Essentially Nice People’

Some may be confused because of medication, others may be distraught at the death of a spouse.

“Orange County has 230,000 older people, over the age of 60, and yes (petty theft) is a problem,” Weatherspoon said.

Pamela Iles, the presiding judge in South Municipal Court and the force behind the pilot program, “feels she has at least 10 of those kinds of cases a month, where there’s a senior who’s never been in the system before,” Weatherspoon said.

Iles said most of the seniors in south Orange County arrested for shoplifting are “essentially nice people, good people, who get involved in kind of compulsive theft situations.”

One man was caught stealing three golf balls, two tennis balls and a bottle of wrinkle remover, she said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

The program “is for real lightweight offenders,” she said, and will exclude those with previous convictions or who appear to be serious thieves.

Iles originally proposed a countywide program, serving all five municipal courts. County officials estimated the cost at $215,000 a year, but said they were uncertain of the cost of the scaled-down pilot program.

Weatherspoon said seniors who have money will be charged fees to pay part of the costs of the program. Charges of $250 or $350 per person have been suggested, she said.

When seniors complete the diversion program, their cases will be dismissed and they will have no criminal records.

“The idea is to put these people into programs that are positive rather than negative and where they’re also making a significant contribution to the community,” Iles said.

The program is a formal version of practices Iles already follows. She said she “diverted” the 72-year-old man who appeared in her court a few months ago for taking the socket wrenches “and he’s done a wonderful job.”