Advocacy Update – Week 7 – 2024

Public Safety and Quality of Life Conundrums Stump Legislators

(3-minute read + an article you should read)

A standard critique of legislative justice reform and our legal system over the past few years is that it’s prioritizing the liberty and autonomy of those perpetrating crimes over the safety of victims of crimes. There is a misguided notion that those committing egregious acts are our most vulnerable when in reality, those who are on the receiving end of those acts are our most vulnerable. 

• Stark examples of this were on full display in an article we highly encourage you to read in SevenDays, in addition to listening to this interview with the article’s author embedded in the community of 160 people who live in Decker Towers, which represents many of Burlington’s most vulnerable residents.
• This community has been subjected to all of the public safety issues you see in downtown Burlington, however, it is in their residence, leaving them feeling the need to arm themselves and form neighborhood watches. 

• Is our Justice System serving these residents when the legal system prioritized the desires of the perpetrator over the victims to the extent that the State’s Attorney accommodated a request from his defender that inadvertently created a legal framework to allow him to trespass in the very place he was arrested?

Meanwhile, the House Committee on General and Housing continued its work on the Homeless Bill of Rights, which would create legal protections for the people trespassing in Decker Towers, as well as doing things such as public urination. 

• Thankfully, the bill was amended later in the week to narrowly tailor it to less vague protections around housing, employment, and voting, which were a place of agreement. 

The Senate Committee on Judiciary worked on legislation that would seek to add some strength to repeated violations of conditions of release (VCRs), which legislators acknowledge are starting to feel like a joke to the public and now to legislators. 

• S.195 Creates an Office of Pretrial Supervision with six officers across the state in the Department of Corrections that report to the Judiciary to consider and suggest Conditions of Release based on an interview and what information is readily available about those who are arraigned pending trial. 
  • There is an issue with the lack of information for judges to know who is in front of them and what their previous interactions with courts and law enforcement entail. 

• The bill also envisions the potential for new conditions of release, including electronic monitoring. The home detention program is only for those with bail now, however, it envisions it as a condition of release. 
• The bill seeks to expand the pretrial consideration to go beyond the risk of flight and include the safety of the community and those around the individual. 

• Also at odds is the case law which narrowly limits the imposition of VCRs to the ability of the state to move forward with prosecution, and the sole purpose of bail is for risk of flight, not to protect public safety. 

• On clear display during testimony are these conflicting priorities with no way of reconciling them; the Legislature has an extreme aversion to incarceration yet has no other way to protect communities from those who thumb their nose at our laws and societal norms, posing a danger to themself and others. 

Just upstairs, in the Governor’s Ceremonial Office, Governor Scott used his weekly press conference to urge legislators to act on public safety and highlight elements of his proposed budget that would affect public safety. 

• The Governor advocated curbing the steady increase in violent crimes by revamping conditions for release to address repeat offenses, modernizing drug crime laws to include new combinations like fentanyl and xylazine, emphasizing drug-use prevention, delaying the implementation of the “Raise the Age” provision, and universal sealing of criminal records.
• The Governor highlighted that his budget proposal also makes investments in the judiciary for two new judges to address increased demand and backlogs, as well as making 20 permanent mental health workers embedded in our State Police barracks.

• As was discussed in previous updates, legislators have taken issue with the Governor’s budget accusing him of not providing the funding needed for public safety efforts. 

• The Governor argues that his budget grows base spending for the Judiciary and Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs by about 5%, significantly more than the roughly 3% for other State departments.
• However, legislators point out that these funding levels will still result in layoffs in these departments. 

Down the hall, the House Judiciary Committee continued their work public safety work which has yielded mixed results. 

• The Committee has spent considerable time on expanding restorative justice programs with a proposed expansion of court diversion for first-time offenders representing almost their entire response to the current public safety crisis. 

• A House Judiciary Committee bill that makes it a crime to enter someone’s vehicle without their consent was given final approval, which, believe it or not, is not a law. The bill now heads to the Senate.
• The retail theft bill the Committee was previously working on is frozen in time, as the Committee is not convinced that harsher penalties will change any behavior. 
• Seemingly done before it could ever get going is the discussion around bringing back work crew as a form of sentencing.