an animator in LA can't pay for a lawyer to fight 2 month of jail (i.e. supposedly something relatively minor). Are animators there doing that bad? (i'd expect it to be more like programmers in SV)
Also, anecdotal evidence from friends in the digital animation field (think Pixar, Dreamworks, etc) is that even those jobs can be relatively low paying for years because they are dream jobs, hence high supply of workers.
Without knowing socio-economic background and life history, I could easily see a creative type in LA choosing a short jail term over the financial hit.
The ideal career path for an ambitious, hard-working, and politically savvy animator is to switch over to the producer track as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
A lot of the work is seasonal at best; you're hired for the duration of one production, and let go when it's over. If the show gets renewed and the folks running it like you you may get offered your job back next year.
You can make a decent living but not working for Bakshi or Kricfalusi; you work for those two because you want the prestige of Having Worked Under A Legend. Or because you worked with them back in the day, have a decent amount of money to fall back on, and they've approached you with a new project that will give you a lot of creative freedom because they trust your sensibility.
(I mostly worked for John K when I was hanging around the industry, so I saw this first-hand.)
Also, think about going to jail for 2 months. 2 months where you're locked up and have absolutely no liberty. If this thing was minor, there's still 2 months you'll never get back. Not to mention the job you probably lose during this stint. I don't wish prison sentences to anybody, not even my worst enemies.
I wouldn't feel as bad that we feel so strongly about locking people up if the conditions weren't so absolutely awful. I'm sure there's a way to make prisons more survivable without sacrificing the "making sure people are inside the box"-ness.
There is no argument what jail time is bad. It is the offense that seems to be minor (and thus easy to fight for a lawyer) - while IANAL, my understanding from what i see and hear around, misdemeanor resulting in 2 months of county jail without a lawyer is really not that big a deal, on par with second DUI, something what with a lawyer can be on the scale of like a month or two of community service, etc...
After googling around, i even more convinced that not having a lawyer (whether by choice or due to not being able to afford it) was her great misfortune as while legally she seems to be a violator, personally i got the impression that at the social level she was kind of a victim, or more precisely she happened to be too weak for (and was broken by) the relationships and the people (much higher-ups in her professional and social hierarchy) she allowed herself to be involved with. Basically she needs counseling, and instead the society comes with all the power of law upon her and throws her in jail (the events do seems to had gotten somewhat out of hands, so something needed to be done, the issue here is what should have been done - the good lawyer would probably was able to turn it into correctional/rehabilitation/treatment direction instead of the pure punitive).