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| Nina Reynard and Jermaine Greene |
Greene unveiled this plan to County Council yesterday. Accompanied by Pretrial Services Director Nina Reynard, he's asking for a new pretrial services officer who will be paid an annual $47,857 salary. This officer will help evaluate persons who are arrested, but before they are placed in custody The pretrial officer will perform a risk assessment before the Magisterial District Judge sets bail at 7 am.
Greene provided an example brought to his attention by Reynard. A person with no criminal record was arrested and charged with possession of drug paraphernalia because he had a roach. He was unable to post $2,500 bail. He sat in jail for 38 days, even though the maximum sentence is just 30 days. He was released immediately when reynard and Greene discovered what had happened.
After that incident, Greene and Reynard began reviewing the bail set by Magisterial District Judges for low level offenders. At this moment, 28 people are incarcerated on minor charges like retail theft because they are unable to post monetary bail
It costs $106 per day to house an inmate, and Reynard told Council that housing these 28 low level offenders has cost the county $91,000. In nearly half of these cases, defendants are being held even though there are existing detainers, which are requests from other jurisdictions to release the person being held into their custody.
Administrator Charles Dertinger also pointed to defendants with minor crimes who are hospitalized. Once a Defendant is in the county's custody, Medicaid is dropped and the county is liable for the entire bill. In addition, Dertinger noted that the county had to pay $7,700 in deputy over time.
In addition to costing the county money, Greene and Reynard pointed out that pretrial detention is unfair to the defendants. Greene said they lose families, homes, jobs and get behind on child support. Reyynard added that there's a stigma to being incarcerated.
"We need to do better," said Greene. "Ninety percent of these people will net be returned to custody," added Reynard. "We are pre-emptively punishing these people."
Greene pointed out that Magisterial District judges still have judicial discretion to set bail as they see fit."We does work is cojust want to give them another tool to let them know this is a problem we're seeing," he explained.
It appears that Magisterial District Judges Nancy Matos Gonzalez and Robert Hawke tend to be the hammers in Northampton County.
Greene added that this new system will mean that pretrial officers have to work weekends, and he will have to negotiate this matter with the unions.
Monetary bail will still be an option for defendants charged with more serious offenses. But interestingly, Reynard said that studies show that monetizing bail fails to make defendants more likely to appear. She said that what does work are reminders at meetings with pretrial officers.
16 comments:
Sounds good, maybe it is good. Is anyone on county council asking about all these new positions being created., If not, are they doing their jobs or just rubber stamping?
These new positions are the result of an exec who balanced the budget on the backs of the workforce. They are designed to assist our most vulnerable. And yes, there are plenty of questions.
I would like to know how Lehigh County does it for comparison. The take I get here is pretrial services is blaming the mini-judges for high bail. Sounds like a directive from the president judge could take of that. Creating jobs is a good thing but creating wasteful jobs is just wasteful though.
4:15. You probably base your life on what your neighbor is doing and live trying to keep up?
Why don’t we legalize and stop all the madness. We don’t need another bureaucrat at $50k to tell us it’s ridiculous to jail a guy for a roach. We already pay millions for the same burea rats who are too stupid to understand this. This is outrageous. Maybe if they’d not follow Lamont’s example and actually show up to do their jobs we’d be better off.
Lehigh County has been doing this for years and it seems to work. An accurate cost benefit analysis can be done to see if this added expense is worth it. However, it does clip the wings of the District Justices. I remember a former DJ in Slatington, who was a former police officer in South Whitehall, stating, while working night-shift, if I have to drive to Allentown to arraign somebody, they're going to jail. He obviously didn't care about the costs. Here is a starting point in any solution.
And stop jailing people for support issues! There are more creative ways to help families stay together. Jail does nothing positive for family issues. Stop the madness!
How about an ankle bracelet. Let them be confined to their homes. Low cost to the County
Are you nutz? That is extremely expensive.
“We don’t need another bureaucrat at $50k to tell us it’s ridiculous to jail a guy for a roach”
The facts say otherwise.
“Maybe if they’d not follow Lamont’s example and actually show up to do their jobs we’d be better off.”
This comes from a liar. McClure is in the job and is everywhere.
We should spend as much as necessary to battle drugs. The war on drugs has been a huge success. What's another $50K? It's only taxpayer money and they're prying assholes, anyway.
The war on drugs, the grip on Americas children. Than there are the ones that collude with advertisementalists and want to reep proceeds at both ends of the spectrum.
I love this idea, fully support it. But on the other hand I wouldn't be surprised if his wife is the new "pre-trial officer". That would cast a negative glow on things.
Pre trial is very involved in almost every case that is at the MDJ level awaiting disposition. They are also called often when an MDJ is setting bail so long as it is during business hours. Once they are committed pre trial visits the defendants at the jail and makes bail recommendations to the courts. I am having a hard time understanding why we are having these issues, is the current system broken? I find it very difficult to believe that a defendant is sitting months on a lone drug para or simple possession charge? Most of these defendants are on probation and parole and this new charge does cause a detainer which keeps them locked up.
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