How a Criminal Justice Reform Became an Enrichment Scheme

[DonViejo]

Low-level offenders can now avoid incarceration in many places by paying a fee. One official in Rapides Parish began asking who was keeping that money.

By JESSICA PISHKO July 14, 2019

Jessica Pishko is a writer in Dallas.

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

ALEXANDRIA, Louisiana—Bruce Kelly has been treasurer of Rapides Parish for three years and was assistant treasurer for 27 before that. A man in his 50s with a bald head and bulldoggish demeanor, Kelly is responsible each year for ensuring that the local government—run by a nine-member elected body called, in Louisiana tradition, a police jury—has enough money to sustain basic functions like paying government salaries, feeding inmates, and maintaining records and inventory for the 131,000-person parish, nestled in the heart of Louisiana.

But in early 2018, Kelly faced a crisis: The district attorney’s office, led by the elected DA, Phillip Terrell, was requesting more than $2.5 million in parish funds. This was more than it had ever asked for in all the years Kelly had been at this job, and Kelly didn’t have the money. In fact, the parish was facing a budget shortfall of $427,000; even its “rainy day fund” had been used up.

In the parish seat of Alexandria, where abandoned storefronts compete with a grand hotel converted from a 19th-century plantation house, many downtown streets desperately needed paving. The main courthouse needed a new air conditioner, to replace one installed in the 1960s. The county jail was overcrowded. The poverty rate in Rapides hovers around 20 percent—average for Louisiana, but above the national rate.

As Kelly reviewed the request, he pulled previous records and found that something had changed in the DA’s budget. 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.

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https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/07/14/criminal-justice-reform-pretrial-diversion-louisiana-227354

[lark]

1. Louisiana ha a long time and well deserved reputation for extorting $$ from travelers.

They extorted $100 from dad way back in the 1960's because he was going 3 miles over the speed limit. Of course, it was in the middle of nowhere, and the dropped the speed limit 30 miles in 1 mile and park cars right behind the signs and pull over anyone with a license plate from a different state. They said he'd stay in jail for 2 weeks unless he paid the CASH fine to them right there and then. They shook me and my husband down for same amount "to not stay to jail" for a dinner we paid cash for at some poedunk restaurant in the middle of nowhere and they claimed we stiffed them. We now fly to Jazz Fest and no longer drive there, it's too much hassle and not safe.

[pecosbob]

2. Good that he called the department out

but no jurisdiction should be depending on fines for the lion's share of it's operating budget. This is financing your township on the backs of the poor and it's shameful. Another aspect of criminal justice that needs to be reformed.