Agenda - 04/19/05 JEO Mtg. - Laserfiche WebLink

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Public safety: Staff lacks the resources to do the job Continued from Page B1 Difficult juveniles don't go away when they're ignored -- close another 119 beds due to they jtlst become more expert- understating, sive problems when they ma- This year. the Lane County ture into difficult adults. jail is expected to prematurely The mentally ill who no release between 6,000 and 7,000 longer receive county services inmates because of (:rowding. are still here ~-- they're j~..~I out Most criminals will not be h,.~ld wanderim, around without ade- before trial, and most will quaie tre~trment, medication or serve only a fraction of their ~upervision, frequently corn- sentences following convict ion. pounding the problems for the A woman recently convict,,d of police, jail and emergency mod- felony theft was released at't c,:- ical systems. serv!ng only 23 hours of her When we cut the methadon,,: 180-ctay jail sentence -- and program for heroin addicts, that was before the jail closed more beds. we're not reducing drug use -- we're just ensuring that the ad- Lane County desperately dicts find their drugs on the needs a bigger jail, but our streets and, generally, support sheriff doesn't even have the their habits through'stealing, money to operate the little jail prostitution, drug dealing and we've got. other illegal activities. The Oregon Constitution We don't need to speculate identifies the district attorney about the results of our poor as the law enforcement author- choices; the consequences are ity within a given jurisdiction, there to be measured. The district attorney is a gate- In 1999, the juvenile arrest keeper in the law enforcement rate in Eugene was higher than system; every felony case from in 90 percent of the cities in the every police agency in the U.S. During that year, the last county must move through the year for which I have complete DA's office to move forward, statistics, the cri~ne rate for Eu- Unfortunately, the Lane gene was in the top 15 percent County DA's office has been of American cities with popula- crippled by years of increasing tions greater than 25,000. The caseloads and financial starva. 199t~ index crime rate for lgu- tion. The office has lost 11 law- gene was higher than the rates yet positions (more than 30 per. m Los Angeles, New York City; cent), nine investigator posi- San Francisco, Las Vegas and tions (more than 80 percent), Phil:~delphia. and a proportionately large We should attack this prob- number of support staffsinc,, l,m by subjecting every related 1981, when the caseload was government program to a cost- less than half of what it is to- benefit analysis that compares day. the actual costs of each The DA's office will receive problem-solution pair. We almost 8,000 cases this year. should first know whether it Deputy district attorneys' case- costs us more to fix a problem loads are nearly three times as. or ignore it. With that informa- heavy as the caseloads of their tion in hand, we should consid- 1981 counterparts. At current er the costs and benefits that staffing, 200 to 300 cases per are more difficult to quantify -- month are either rejected for such as the equally important, lack of resources or treated as but more ethereal, "quality of non-criminal violations, and life" considerations. the DA's office has been told to For example, let's consider expect yet another severe cut the question, "Should tax del- next spring, lars be used to fund treatment Lane County's Community for criminal drug addicts?" Tho Corrections department is sim- extreme anti-tax-no-matter- ilarly understaffed. Parole and what faction would say, "No, probation officers supervise they put thefnselvos in that sit- about twice as many offenders uation, they can get themselves as national standards recom, out of it. We shouldn't have to mend. To add insult to injury, pay for the consequences of these officers have been de- their voluntary choices." prived of most of the tools they Nobody wants to pay for need to do their jobs. They somebody else's stupidity, but have little jail space available that response completely miss- to them, so their ability to sanc- es the point. If the objective is tion misconduct is severely to make the community safe limited. Little drug treatment and save money, we need to is available, and most of the ask, "Does it cost us more men- other traditional alternatives ey to treat or ignore the crimi- for managing offenders are ei- nal drug addicts?" thor unavailable or over-filled. That question produces a The staffing situation is al- more useful, solution-driven most as grim in the county Ju- answer. The data show that for venile Department and Mental every $1 invested in addiction Health Department. Our public treatment, $7 is saved by reduc- servants simply don't have the lng costs in criminal justice, resources to do what we're ask- health care and emergency- lng of them. room visits, welfare, disability Lane County has some great and other costs. people doing difficult jobs, but we can't double their work, cut their resources and then expect. them to be successful.