Part III of a seriesThe Missouri State Public Defense System may be center stage in the pursuit of financing, but its budget shortfalls are shared by the other two branches of the state’s legal system.
“The budget problem is not unique to the public defense system,” said Dan Patterson, chief assistant prosecuting attorney for Greene County. “It’s really something the state needs to address systemwide.”
In July, the state public defense system began closing some of its offices to new cases when those offices reached capacity. That decision was made after years of struggling with budgets its leaders felt were not sufficient to hire attorneys to cover the caseloads, said Cat Kelly, deputy director for the system. The public defense system operates on a budget of $34.7 million annually, and Kelly said another $21 million per year is needed. Officials with the other two branches of the state’s justice system note a true fix for public defenders would require attention to the judiciary and prosecutors as well.
“As an example, the 38th judicial circuit court covers Taney and Christian counties. … They’re busy counties and they share one judge,” said Taney County Prosecuting Attorney Jeffrey Merrell. “As a result, we have a circuit court judge to hear cases half of the time. The state could assign a hundred new public defenders, but it’s not going to resolve more cases because we don’t have enough judges to get those cases heard.”
Statewide, there are 115 prosecutors’ offices, each funded individually by county, said Jason Lamb, executive director of the Jefferson City-based Missouri Office of Prosecution Services. Lamb said each county is responsible for addressing its own budget concerns.
In Greene County, Patterson said there are 23 attorneys in its criminal division, and while there is a need for three more, there is simply not enough money in the budget to hire. As for the state judiciary, it faced $3 million in cuts from its fiscal 2010 budget, according to the 2009 Report of the Missouri Judiciary.
As the state and counties struggle with declining revenues, however, the state-funded public defenders and judges, and the county-funded prosecutors, aren’t expecting financial windfalls any time soon. That has some divisions looking internally.
“It would require more personnel to ultimately fix the system, in all three areas,” Patterson said. “What we’ve done, in the meantime, is to look at ways to be more efficient in how we utilize our resources.”
Greene County has a drug court and a DWI court, he noted, and its restorative justice program offers defendants an opportunity to work through Missouri State University’s Center for Dispute Resolution. First-time misdemeanants, Patterson said, can avoid a charge being filed altogether, while felony cases may result in a case being dismissed after restitution is made.
“I think the Greene County prosecutors have led the state in working on diversion and looking at more efficient ways to move these cases through the court,” Kelly said. “It did have a tremendous impact. When we first started working in the area, the Springfield office was running at 187 percent of capacity. Because of Greene County’s efforts, that has now dropped to 130 percent.”
Lamb is co-chair of the Missouri Bar Criminal Law Council, a permanent group formed two months ago to address issues related to the criminal justice system, including the current budget shortfalls. While the council is in its early stages, Lamb said he believes Greene County’s diversion program may be a model the committee looks to as it explores ways to effectively manage cases without necessarily incurring additional costs.
Adopting programs modeled after Greene County across the state, however, poses challenges to individual offices, he noted.
“These offenses would still be committed, so while we’re taking them out of one part of the system, we’re still dealing with them,” he said. “I think the challenge is certainly education and communicating the message that this is a valid tool that can be used to improve and strengthen the criminal justice system as a whole. But the mechanism has to be put into place to absorb the extra work.”
Taney County operates a drug court, Merrell said, and while it’s considered a success because it helps to cut down on repeat offenses, it still requires court appearances. The county doesn’t maintain a mediation program, he said.
“It’s certainly a great program to entertain, but you would still have to find a way to do it with the limited judicial resources at hand,” he said.
A diversion program’s structure also can impact efficiency, Kelly noted.
Legislation would help set the framework for a diversion program that can be adopted – and adapted – by individual counties, Lamb said.
“I think the keys are providing a structure, a statutory structure for how the program could work, that still ensures adequate flexibility for each county – and also, developing a valid funding source for a program,” he said.[[In-content Ad]]
