You have commented 338 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Government
How a Criminal Justice Reform Became an Enrichment Scheme
2019-07-15
BLUF:
[Politico] Alexandria, La.‐Bruce Kelly has been treasurer of Rapides Parish for three years and was assistant treasurer for 27 before that.

Over the past three years, the DA’s intake from court fines had dropped from $900,000 to about $500,000 in 2017. According to Kelly’s calculations, the number of traffic tickets issued‐the DA office’s primary source of fine income‐had also dropped, from an average of 12,000 per year to 7,000. Kelly found it curious that the DA’s office was requesting so much money from the parish, while seemingly cutting down on one of its main money sources.

And there were signs that the DA’s office, despite its big ask, wasn’t short on cash: It had a fleet of new cars with leather seats. Kelly went through old state audits and other public information, and came to the conclusion that Terrell’s office was bringing in plenty of money but keeping it for itself.

He was right. Under Terrell, the DA’s office, as shown by public documents, had ramped up its "pretrial diversion" program, also sometimes called "pretrial intervention," or PTI. As the website for the Rapides Parish DA’s office explains, the program provides "nonviolent offenders an opportunity to avoid conviction and incarceration" through "tailored" agreements in which the offenders pay money in exchange for their charges being dropped and their cases dismissed. In the program’s simplest form, instead of receiving and paying speeding tickets, offenders were paying fees not to get tickets. And those fees were going directly to the DA’s office‐whose website features a prominent MAKE A PAYMENT button.
Posted by:Besoeker

#1  The DA Phillip Terrell is a vocal Democrat.
Posted by: Dron66046   2019-07-15 12:45  

00:00