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Police Chief Yohanan Danino. Photo by Tomer Appelbaum

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At least 2,000 people, 60 children now in custody until end of legal proceedings; police commissioner says practice serves as deterrent.

By Yaniv Kubovich for Haaretz

In the past two years, there has been a spike in the number of accused people held in custody during legal proceedings. Haaretz found that in many cases they are not dangerous criminals but people who are mentally impaired or cannot afford bail.

Between 2012 and 2013, 45,215 people were held in custody until the end of the legal process — 9,000 more than in the previous two years, Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino told the Knesset’s Interior and Environment Committee last week. At least 2,000 people are currently in custody until the end of the legal process, compared to 238 in all of 2000.

“Who gets arrested until the end of the legal process? A dangerous criminal,” Danino said. “I intend to flood the courts with requests to hold suspects in custody until the end of the legal process where this is justified.”

Danino told the committee that keeping criminals in custody until the end of the legal process creates deterrence. The figures he cited did not refer to the reasons for the rise in detentions, nor did anyone ask how many of those detained were minors, inmates in psychiatric institutions or people who simply could not afford bail.

Chief Public Defender Dr. Yoav Sapir said that according to constitutional practice and Supreme Court rulings, under no circumstances is custody meant to be a deterrent or an “advance” on the penalty, if the defendant is convicted.

“In our experience, the increase in the number of arrests reflects a lower threshold for holding people in custody and the erosion of the right to freedom,” he said.

Petty and poor

On March 2, a man took an unattended taxi near the Be’er Sheva bus terminal and drove around the block. A few minutes later, he returned the taxi to its owner.

The police indicted the man, 51, for stealing the taxi, abandoning it (although he had returned it to its owner) and driving without a license and insurance. The police knew the man to be homeless, mentally impaired and frequently hospitalized in psychiatric institutions.

The police prosecutor told the court that “despite the numerous charges against the respondent, the proceedings were halted as he was deemed unfit to stand trial due to mental illness.” Still, the man was held in custody in a psychiatric institution until the end of the legal process.

Last month, the Eilat police indicted 50-year-old man for throwing a rock at a car window, shattering it. The police officers knew the man was mentally impaired but filed charges against him anyway, and the court agreed to keep him in custody until the end of the legal process.

In court, the police prosecutor quoted the defendant’s version of events, which had little to do with the charges against him. “I know the queen is dead, but she will be born in nine months,” the defendant told the police investigator. “She will be called Yaeli,” he said.

The Eilat Magistrate’s Court agreed to extend the man’s custody, but ordered a psychiatrist to determine whether he was fit to stand trial.

The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that sending a person for psychiatric evaluation cannot serve as a pretext to hold him in custody. Only a criminal offense can justify that.

Two African asylum-seekers were arrested on March 3 on suspicion of stealing a cell phone on a Tel Aviv beach. They were charged and police asked the court to hold them in custody until the end of the legal process.

The Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court released them on 5,000 shekels bail, which they could not pay. They could not make bail even after the court reduced it to 1,000 shekels and have been behind bars for almost two weeks.

“They have no money, they’re alone in Israel, so they’ll remain in custody,” said attorney Tamer Obied of the Public Defender’s Office. In this case, the defendants’ custody will be longer than the penalty for their crime.

One of Obied’s clients is a Palestinian minor who was caught in Israel without a visa. “His father’s a drunk, and his mother has cancer. They don’t have 700 shekels to release their boy, so he’ll remain in custody until the end of the legal process. It’s a farce.”

The boy is one of 60 minors being charged with criminal offenses who are currently in custody until the end of the legal process. The police will not provide the total number of minors detained this way in recent years.

Another of the 60 minors is an East Jerusalem youth who the Jerusalem Police intelligence officer enlisted to help catch a motor-scooter thief. The boy was told to meet the suspect, whom he knew, and report any information he gathered to the police. When the officer realized the boy had given him no information from the meeting, he stopped handling him. Shortly thereafter, the officer arrested the boy and charged him with stealing the motor scooter in question.

The court denied the request to hold the boy in custody until the end of the legal process, ordered his immediate release and castigated the conduct of the police. The Jerusalem Magistrate judge said the police had turned their back on the boy for unknown reasons and called their acts “unworthy.”

From gridlock to lockup

“A person arrested for investigation is still seen as innocent,” said Sapir, the chief public defender. “Restricting his freedom must be the last resort, [done only] if he poses a danger to the public or may obstruct the course of justice. The sweeping detention policy undermines this principle. Anyone could be in danger of arrest — protesters, people questioning a police officer’s authority when it’s illegally applied or people indicted for trivial offenses.”

He continued, “Setting numerical goals for putting people in custody creates motivation for unnecessary arrests. It is to be hoped the courts won’t lend a hand to this alarming practice and treat the police requests for custody with skepticism and suspicion.

The police ask the courts to hold almost any traffic offender in custody until the end of the legal process. Last December, police asked a Jerusalem court to keep in custody an East Jerusalem driver who ran a red light and crashed into another car. Nobody was hurt and the driver had a valid license and was not drunk. In its request, the police prosecutor mentioned the driver had a criminal record for “holding a suspicious object.”

“A traffic accident is not enough to keep someone in custody until the end of the legal process,” Judge Abraham Tennenbaum ruled.

In many cases, the courts reprimand the police for asking to hold defendants in custody until the end of the legal process without adequate justification.

In November, a man known to Tel Aviv’s social services as mentally impaired was indicted for breaking and entering. In court, it was revealed that the man had in fact been brought into the plaintiff’s home by the plaintiff himself. Magistrate’s Court Judge Maayan Ben Ari, who was asked to remand the man into custody until the end of the legal process, found the defendant’s version to be credible.

In any case, she ruled, he was unfit to stand trial and it was made clear that he was not responsible for his actions. “There is no apparent evidence in the case … and no reason to keep him in custody,” she said, sending the defendant to the Abarbanel Mental Health Center to decide whether he should be hospitalized.